


A True Red Angel

by RingPing



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon), Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Adoption, Crossover, Family, Gen, Homeworld (Steven Universe), Homeworld Hierarchy (Steven Universe), Homeworld is Horrible (Steven Universe), Primarchs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 57,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RingPing/pseuds/RingPing
Summary: Angron - the gladiator king, the butcher of Istvaan, the red angel. Titles which describe the rage-fuelled creature that the malignant cybernetics sown into his brain forced him to become. Not the paragon of compassion, empathy and hope he was originally meant to be.This is the tale of if his gestation pod was delivered not to Nuceria's savage lands, but another universe entirely.Here he will be raised, and an Empire will fall.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 33





	1. Fallen Angel: Chapter 1

It was nighttime in Beach City, it was the same sky above as countless nights before it, the same inky black plane dotted with the same tiny pinpricks made of the light from distant stars while the same dimly lit pock marked moon orbited overhead.

But that didn't make it any less beautiful.

With the gems away on yet another mission Steven and Greg were once more left to their own devices. At present they lay on top of the grassy hill above the beach house with a half finished box of donuts between them.

"Hey, dad" Steven turned to Greg, his words coming out mumbled due to the half chewed bite of donut in his mouth.

"Yeah what is it schtoo-ball?" He asked back.

"You know how the gems are kinda like aliens?"

"Mmhm..?" Greg answered back slowly while at the same time implying for Steven to carry on.

"Well, have you wondered what other aliens are-" Steven swallowed the donut before turning and swinging his arm to wave at the night sky "Out there?"

Greg took a few moments to stare at the glittering, murky black sky as if to try and discern something from the vague tapestry that was space when viewed by the naked eye. While they yielded very little, the stars themselves were still beautiful to simply marvel at, especially further away from Empire city where eternal car exhaust and artificial lights were not present to blot them out.

After a few moments Greg turned back to face Steven "Mmm... not really, but I'd like to think that they're like us, just taking in life day by day." He paused for a moment "Maybe you should ask the gems sometime - they'd probably know way more about space stuff than me." Greg smiled as he answered his son's small innocent query.

Though there was a small hint of forlorning in his tone. As Steven grew older he seemed more and more fascinated about the gem's activities rather than bonding with his good old dad - but small moments like these the two of them still shared reaffirmed his belief that his son would never wholly forget about him.

"Huh, didn't think of that, thanks dad." Steven replied, smiling and sounding genuinely grateful for his dad's advice before stuffing his maw with another bite of strawberry glazed donut and turning skywards once more.

#####

**Homeworld**

"Quick over here!" "Over here quickly!" The Rutiles nervously called out to their fellow off colours while peeking their heads out from the tunnel entrance's side to anxiously track their progress. Fluorite made surprisingly fast progress, despite what her short legs and elongated body would suggest, and Rhodonite was thankfully not too far behind with Padparadscha awkwardly cradled in her arms.

The signature high pitched whine of the shattering robonoids growing louder and louder did little to help their sanity. Indeed the fact they were still sane after thousands of years where death was always a mere few slip ups away, thousands of years of being despised and persecuted by their own people, was a miracle; however in these thousands of years each of them at least still had one thing to cling onto. Eachother.

It made their eternal persecution just about bearable - there were always those few moments of solace when death's grip was beaten back just far enough that they could enjoy eachother's company, even if for just a short time.

Though today was definitely not one of those days.

Rhodonite eventually found the willpower to spare a glance back to check on how far, or rather close, the robonoids were to them. Even if she had only viewed them for a second before turning back forwards, the crushing knot of dread had already tightened around her mind, the grinding mental pain coming from it made it just that much harder to concentrate.

"In my visions I see you doing something that will make you feel very uncomfortable."

Padparadscha's late predictions normally were met with indifference or exasperation on Rhodonite's part. However this time the statement and the unusually flat, deadpan tone it was delivered in only served to further fray her already worn nerves, but she couldn't let this get to her, especially not now.

The crunch of gravel echoed through the monolithic complex of the kindergartens as Rhodonite and Fluorite sprinted across the bridge, their respite growing nearer and nearer as the Rutiles' desperate expressions from the other end of the tunnel became clearer and clearer.

"Hnhhh come on, come on, come on!" Rhodonite finally snapped out, if only in a futile attempt to try and drown out the whine of the approaching robonoids which slowly chipped away at her sanity as it grew in volume.

To the credit of Fluorite she held her woes in despite Rhodonite's outburst, knowing full well the effect a slip of panic would have on her fellow off colours. Instead, she continued her gallop to safety of the cavern's end, all six of her legs working in unison to propel her from with urgent haste.

Fluorite arrived first, her large form seamlessly sliding in and twisting around to ready herself to begin pushing the boulder in place. Rhodonite came next with Padparadscha in tow, sliding on the ground awkwardly as she tried to gently place Padparadscha on the ground whilst attempting to swing her way to also begin pushing on the boulder all in one single motion. Soon enough the Rutile twins joined the effort as well.

With an audible grunt the five of them began to push with all speed. Their stress was palpable, limbs felt restless, and expressions were scrunched. They knew quite well that a moment of laxity in this situation would certainly be their end - for to one side of them was the end of the cavern, and on the other was an army of shattering robonoids.

With one last collective heave coming from the group the boulder finally groaned into place, its midsection just large enough to plug the tunnel. Though as the off colours' postures began to slacken, a familiar, dreaded noise stole their attention.

They were not quick enough.

Fear induced shock paralyzed their forms where they stood as they each recognised the all too recognisable red scanner beams of the robonoids lighting up the ground just in front of their feet. Four of the robonoids had been swift enough to make it into the cavern's end, and in their one minded struggle to push the boulder in place they had missed them floating in.

One by one the robonoids entered an aggressive stance as they detected the defective gemstones possessed by the off colours. Time seemed to slow for a time as each of the off colours' bodies eased up, not in relaxation, but rather in calm despair. Though not a hivemind species the same thought entered each of the gems' minds - if they were to die, then at least they were to die free.

_schnk_

The Rutiles and Padparadscha, put to death for the way they had emerged.

_SCHNK_

Fluorite and Rhodonite, put to death for what they believed in.

_**SCNHNK** _

All of them, put to death for defying the diamonds' inscrutable will.

_**SCHNK VWHOOOSH - CRASH!** _

A sudden shockwave of immaterial force struck their forms aside, battering their bodies and minds with the unfiltered energies of raw thoughts and emotions given form. In their grieving they had ignored the sound of the veil of reality being struck and sundered by a metaphorical sledgehammer. But just as suddenly as it had appeared, the jagged rift had collapsed upon itself, leaving the off colours stupefied and the sucking the robonoids to their doom in its wake.

"Oh stars! A wonderful vision has come to me, in our time of greatest need someone will come to save us!" Padparadscha exclaimed with enthusiasm, her previous despair seemingly never having existed in the first place.

Her late prediction seemed to have a rousing effect on the other off colours when one by one they opened their eyes and looked to their gemstones. Relief flooded their faces as they saw that they were still intact and undamaged, slowly looking up they also saw that the robonoids had indeed vanished and Padapradscha was walking up to someone… no, something?

"Uhh, Padparadscha - I don't think that's a person." Rhodonite said, sounding puzzled while tentatively making her way over the object as well.

"Fluorite do you know," Left Rutile asked as she pointed with her thumb towards the object that had buried itself in the rock floor whilst turning to face Fluorite "What that is?" Finished Right Rutile. They queried the fusion to see if the vast reservoir of knowledge her many components shared may be able to shed some light on the situation.

Fluorite was lost in thought for a moment, it looked almost like an escape pod from a starship, but as she came closer she saw that the insignias painted on it were nothing like the aesthetic the Gem Empire would ever use. The symbols of the Empire projected strength, yet still had an appealing and ornate style to them. Meanwhile, in stark contrast, the symbols on this pod oozed of nothing but raw marshal authority.

The two symbols present each looked like they were stamped onto the pod with pitch black ink. One was a sharp mouthed head of a creature with four lightning bolts emerging from it, with two coming down from the base of what looked to be the neck and the other two emerging from the top of what she assumed to be the head.

Then there was the second set of symbols, which on the other hand seemed as if they were some sort of alien script. Though Fluorite could not make out what they meant, they seemed to be simple enough, a diagonal cross and two vertical bars next to eachother. This all told her that it was likely not what she first thought it was.

Besides, how would an escape pod from space ever get this far down underground? After that thought she had made a conclusion. "No… no I do not" Fluorite answered truthfully in the same calming, practically motherly tone that she nearly always spoke with.

"I wonder what happens if I press th- ah!" Rhodonite backed off in surprise as a hiss of steam and jelly-like liquid escaped as the clear casing on the front of the pod suddenly jerked open, her sudden movement prompting the laxed stance of the other off colours to quickly stiffen as they braced for anything to leave the pod. Only once a few tense moments had passed did they continue their walk towards the pod, albeit at a slower pace.

As they arrived they each surrounded the pod in a semicircle, they peered inside at its contents with guarded curiosity, and their eyes were met with a small gemoid form. It met all the criteria: two arms, two legs, a body and a head, but-

"Where is its gemstone?" Left Rutile wondered aloud.

"On its back maybe?" Rhodonite replied.

"Its limbs look deformed, they're too small for efficient use." Right Rutile grimly pointed out.

"Now now, they might be another off colour, just like us." Fluorite voiced the group's unsaid conclusion while at the same time somewhat reprimanding Right Rutile for her choice of words.

"Well, we can't just leave them here then." Rhodonite said, Right Rutile's words fresh in her mind. But as she moved to pick up the being it stirred, almost sensing her closing the distance. She stalled for a moment before continuing, though this time the being's eyes opened in alarm, and in mere moments of seeing her it let out an ear piercing wail that forced the off colours to take a few steps back in fright.

"WAAAAH!"


	2. Fallen Angel: Chapter 2

**Scottish highlands, underneath Loch Ness**

"Amethyst for the last time, no we will NOT be using this gem to 'prove' the existence of some monster humans believe in!" Pearl threw her arms in the air as she exclaimed, exasperated, her voice echoing through the eerie subterranean cavern as if nature itself had emphasised her point.

"Aww c'mon, why you always gotta be so killjoy P?" Amethyst answered back nonchalantly "I mean, imagine how many views we could get on TubeTube." She added, if only to further annoy Pearl, prompting them to finally bubble the corrupted gemstone before teleporting it back to the temple for safekeeping.

"But that's exactly why we shouldn't! Humans s-" Pearl stopped her tirade mid sentence, quickly going into a combat stance and drawing her spear as she saw Garnet in front of them having stiffened to a halt mid-step. Then Amethyst, while being slower on the draw, followed suit soon after with the same seriousness.

Pearl immediately took to surveying the area for any possible threat, though the only thing her suddenly heightened senses could pick up was the pitter patter of water droplets falling from stalactites on the roof and the scurrying of an occasional crab on the damp cavern floor.

"Yo, Garnet what do you see?... Garnet?" Amethyst asked, wanting to break the tense silence. But it was not until after a few more weighted moments had ticked away that Garnet finally answered.

"The flow of time has been shifted onto another course - a hundred channels have been blocked off, but in turn another hundred have been dug." She paused for a moment "Where they lead to now is... uncertain."

Despite having answered, and in doing so showing that she had heard the question, Garnet sounded eerily distant which only served to further the discomfort and unease the other two currently felt.

"What d'you mean by that?" Amethyst questioned, definitely lost on what meaning the vague statement could have. Though this only prompted Garnet to enter another tense silence as she pondered what to say in return.

"Something has just caused a huge shift to occur in what futures are possible and which ones aren't." She stopped and took a moment to think "What that something is, however, is uncertain, but whatever event that caused this felt as if it occurred somewhere far off, distant." Garnet answered as she did her best to hold her stoic demeanour.

"Distant? As in… no" Pearl whispered the last part, dread's icy grip immediately clamping down on her psyche as she drew a conclusion. "We can't fight _them_ alone!" She whispered.

"Wait wait, hold up a moment - you guys aren't talking about… " The younger gem trailed off. Amethyst couldn't help but overhear Pearl's frantic whispering, and while she had not fought against the forces of the Empire herself, she had seen enough of what their actions had caused to rightly fear them.

"Amethyst, Pearl." Garnet said with a commanding tone to summon their attention away from their errant thoughts. As they looked to their leader she landed a firm grip on their shoulders. "I have a feeling that this time, **if** they do come back," She paused, summoning some grim confidence for her next words to try and reassure her fellow gems.

"Then we won't be alone."

#####

**Homeworld**

"WAAAAH!"

Though they did not need to have ears to hear, the psychic aura being emitted by the being's call of distress still forced each one of them to grab the sides of their heads in agony, grimacing a little more each time their minds fought against it to take a few steps backwards in a futile attempt to lessen the pain.

Though their steps did little in that regard, it had at least brought them away from the being's line of sight and eventually, for what felt like eternity, the hammering blows on their very soul gradually lessened until they were mere prickles as the being's fear filled wails teetered off into confused sobs.

Despite the de-escalation of the situation the off colours still stood back, each wondering with some puzzled guilt in their hearts - what could they have done to warrant such a reaction?

"Maybe it's… because of us." Rhodonite muttered pessimistically, kicking the dusty ground as she spoke. The other off colours seemed to share the sentiment, their postures slackening as they looked down at their imperfect forms in shame.

Except for Fluorite, undeterred by her companions' attitude and the earlier reaction of the pod's occupant she gently moved to look over them once more. This time making sure to not make any sharp or sudden movements that could possibly be interpreted as aggression by the being.

It seemed to work, rather than crying out in fear the small being, which was currently nestled inside a mess of tubes and wires, simply stared her with the same guarded curiosity they had eyed it with earlier. It kept its limbs tightly bound to its person as if in self defence - which was understandable - Fluorite knew her size was quite intimidating to the other off colours when they initially met, but it seemed that her maternal demeanour had won out.

She waited for a few more moments just to make sure the being was placated, all the while softly smiling in an effort to calm them down enough so that they and the off colours could converse. The being continued to look at her in return, eyes glossy from recently formed tears. Their expression managed to both be firmly neutral while practically prompting Fluorite to speak.

By now the other off colours' curiousity had won over their fear and one by one they walked over to the pod, each movement slow and measured as to not undo Fluorite's efforts. Though each one of them still stood some distance away as an act of caution.

"Hello there." She said while waving at them "My name is Fluorite, what is yours?" Though it was a simple question it should go a long way to establishing an identity, if the being was a gem that is.

"Gooh gaa." They gurgled out.

"Goo gah? That sure doesn't sound like any kind of gem I've ever heard of." Rhodonite commented quietly in an effort to not distress the being.

"Maybe they're not a gem at all then?" Left Rutile suggested. "The symbols on their pod certainly aren't gem glyph." Right Rutile then added.

"Pthbrrh goo gaa da bee boo." The being spluttered out while trying to wiggle free from the pod.

"Do you think they're trying to tell us something?" Rhodonite questioned.

"Oh my, I have just had a most interesting vision! Whatever the being will say next is devoid of any meaning at all, how mysterious!" A chippy Padparadscha called out from the background. Normally her late premonitions were of little use, but the other off colours knew that, at least, they were always accurate.

Rhodonite initially cringed and blocked her head again upon hearing just how loudly Padparadscha had called out, though after a few moments had passed without another soul gnawing screech she relaxed once more with a huff. "Huh, thanks Padparadscha." She said, sounding half grateful and half shaken. "But we can't just keep calling them 'it' or 'the being' forever." She added with a shrug.

The rest of the off colours looked to eachother and hummed in agreement as they all realised that it would certainly get awkward after a while. Fluorite, being the one nearest to the pod, looked over the symbols again. This time for any meaning or inspiration she could get from them so that she could formulate some sort of name.

There was the bold black script on the bottom, the diagonal cross and two bars. It appeared to be some sort of alien script, but she wasn't well versed in that subject so that was immediately given up on. Indeed, the Empire seemed far more partial to extermination rather than study of any aliens they found in their colonisation efforts, so it was unlikely many gems had any significant amount of knowledge on the matter at all.

Then came the symbol of a sharp faced creature stamped in black ink on the top of the pod. Perhaps another alien or a creature from a planet they lived on? Though again, not a subject that she had any understanding in.

"Hrrrnh grreh!" The being kept sputtering as its tiny limbs struggled in an energetic display to escape the confines of the pod, their job only made harder by the remnants of whatever liquid that was previously contained inside now serving to slicken the pod's inner surface.

' _Energetic… that's it!'_ Fluorite looked over the creature symbol once more, there were also four bolts of electricity arcing away from it to consider. ' _Bolt'_ She mused, gem names often alluded to their role in the running of the Empire, and by extension the way they acted - and as she thought over it the being was quite like a lightning bolt - strong and energetic, despite their tiny size.

Fluorite couldn't help but let a small laugh escape as she moved to pick up the being to help them in their current predicament. Their display was honestly quite adorable, the determined expression they had on contrasting with the chubby face it was plastered over while its tiny limbs fluttered about. Though as she moved to pick it up she heard the dissuading whispers of the other off colours coming from the background, the previous incident still fresh in their minds.

But it seemed the caring, almost maternal, attitude that Fluorite constantly exuded won out. As she leant over to grab it the being faced her - its one minded focus suddenly being replaced with curious caution. Though much to her surprise as her arms moved towards the being it reciprocated by lifting its body and arms to meet her, likely finally deducing that she was no threat and meant to help.

Fluorite slowly cradled the being out of the pod with her bottom pair of arms, then using her upper pair she wiped off the remaining fluid on their face. The action elicited them to wave their arms about and quietly whine in protest, but aside from that they stayed relatively calm. She smiled as she looked down upon the newest member of the small band of off colours, gem or not she knew they were an outsider like them and would need protection from the ever vigilant forces of Homeworld.

"Bolt" She chuckled warmly while looking down at them. "I think it's a lovely name."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> I probably should have mentioned this last chapter, but there will be no Great Crusade coming for Angron, at this point he is now in a totally different universe.
> 
> Despite Homeworld not having any food or water Angron shouldn't really need any sustenance to stay alive. There was an incident where some scout marines were buried under rubble for roughly 2 years and most of them were still alive once dug out, and seeing as Primarchs have far superior genetic modification he likely can go for longer than that.


	3. Fallen Angel: Chapter 3

**Homeworld**

The kindergartens on Homeworld are old, very old. Few gems are born from their withered husks - the life force needed for their formation long since used millennia ago - and even fewer still ever come to visit. Especially when the glowing perfection of gem society lies above, far contrasting the drab grey collection of rocky tunnels and towers that made up the kindergartens.

Though this suited those who call this place home just fine, all the less to bother the assortment of outcast gems who live there, as if they didn't have enough to worry about already. Those who are malformed, rebellious or disgraced each shirking away from the diamond authority's will made manifest in the form of the shattering robonoid swarms that prowled those desolate crags. As it should be.

But now among their number was one mysterious organic.

One mysterious organic which has quite recently become a thorn in her side. At first she had thought the robonoids under her purview had made some grievous error, or that their scanners had malfunctioned somehow. The data they gave before their untimely destruction showed there were four - perhaps four and a half, or even five, depending on how that abomination of a rutile quartz was classed - separate gems detected. That much was correct, but there was a fifth… more anomalous signature detected among them.

The first part was its very gemoid shape, that coupled with their relatively bulky proportions at first suggested that it may have been a quartz. One who she could tell that despite their somewhat smaller stature would have still been, if barely, within acceptable parameters. Though even that on its own would be odd, why would a functioning quartz - usually programmed to be loyal and disciplined soldiers - be colluding with defects and dissidents?

Dissatisfied with that idea she re-read what little bits of data that each robonoid had managed to send before their destruction over and over again, the floating fingers of her limb enhancers tapping away at a separate screen to record each scrap of detail she could possibly gather. And with each scrap of information she sorted through the idea that it was a quartz at all was being chipped away piece by piece. But that brought up another question, if it wasn't a gem, then what else could it have been?

 _'...Humans'_ She reluctantly considered. As ridiculous as that idea sounded, what other known still living species could match the gemoid body plan so neatly in both basic form and proportions?

The first piece of evidence that this thing was most definitely not a gem was the lack of a gemstone anywhere on its body. Though it was certainly a possibility that machines could have glitches and errors from time to time, she was **very** sure that an error as egregious as not registering the presence of something as distinct as a gemstone was incredibly unlikely.

Then came the body of the thing itself, or rather the composition of it. No gem, at least no gem wearing limb enhancers, had a form composed of anything but hardlight and their gemstone. This reinforced the odd conclusion she was coming to even further - just how many highly improbable errors would have had to happen for robonoids to mistake light for water and carbon?

With all the evidence pointing towards the strange, yet most likely situation of a loose organic she let out a nervous sigh as she opened the direct messaging line to the overseer of the human zoo. Normally she wouldn't ever dare dream of directly contacting someone so high up as Holly Blue Agate, especially with her being in another diamond's court, but these circumstances seemed important enough that an exception would have to be made, just this once.

"This is Peridot, Facet-2F5L, Cut-5XG reporting from Homeworld. Though this report may at first seem… unusual, I believe that this falls under your jurisdiction. Recent data I have received suggests there may be an escaped organic, possibly a human, on Homeworld. Though they serve no obvious purpose these organics were still valuable to her grand clarity - the late Pink diamond." Peridot's tone shifted from flat formality to noticeable mourning at the mention of the fallen diamond before cutting off for a moment's silence in respect.

"Therefore, knowing of the fragility of organics, I thought that it was necessary to alert you of its presence as soon as I was able so that it may be recovered intact. The data I have gathered on it will be attached for your own viewing. If this happens to be a false alarm then, your clarity, I humbly ask for your mercy. Peridot out." She finished. Though she'd never admit it, the final part of the message was more of a begrudging last minute addition to try and please Holly Blue's infamous stubborn ego more than anything else.

#####

**Homeworld kindergartens, moments before.**

Bolt's legs swung back and forth as he gleefully looked down the canyon. Though rather than being met with a vertical drop into a valley below his eyes were instead the audience to a rather eerie, but alluring sight - open space.

He could see the point where the rocky walls and towers of the kindergarten were abruptly cut off by the darkness of space, looking even further he saw the other pieces of Homeworld drifting near eachother, then looking further still he could make out a section of the two shimmering rings of ice and dust that surrounded the planet coming into view.

All he wore was the bent gunmetal grey front plate of his former gestation pod hanging loosely on his shoulders in a way that covered his chest and back, the hatch long since removed to make a hole for his head, and a breechcloth made from a synthetic black plastic-like material that once formed the tubes torn apart from his pod. Despite his minimal dress, the bitter cold emanating from the void of space only a mere few hundred meters below did very little to mar his experience.

He smiled as he looked on with childish wonder, he'd be lying if he said that he wouldn't want to stay here with the off colours just to marvel at the sight of it all for hours, days even. All just spent gawking at the infinite cosmos. But he knew that even if he wanted to, he couldn't - they were always being hunted down and soon enough they would need to move again.

' _Always being hunted down…'_ Wisps of cold air escaped his lips as he let out a silent sigh, his smile faltering ever so little. With that thought in mind the view before him looked far less marvelous, how many were out there who are also being hunted down just like him and the off colours? How many were on the various pieces of Homeworld alone? How many were out there in the rest of the Empire's colonies?

_vwooom_

Bolt's mind snapped to full readiness as a faint whine passed into his ears, his superhuman hearing managing to pick up the distant noise despite the thin atmosphere. It sounded all too familiar.

From the corner of his vision he saw the off colours already standing up and getting ready to wander once more, despite this instead of following them he stayed put, his body still remaining relaxed as to not betray the unease he felt in his hearts.

_Vwooom_

There it was again, now there was no doubt as to what the source of it was. Even though it was obvious they were coming he dared not move, he didn't want to move. No, he would make a stand.

"Uh, Bolt? We're going now, you coming?" Rhodonite asked him half humorously, thinking he was going to say the obvious answer.

"Can I stay just for a moment longer? I'll catch up with you later." He hastily lied as he pretended to suddenly be totally enthralled with stargazing again.

She stood in nervous silence for some time, but after seeing the joy the experience brought to him a small smile worked its way onto Rhodonite's face, likely from falling for Bolt's faux innocence. Momentarily she relented, after all, what was the harm a few more seconds of stargazing able to do?

"Alright then, just make sure y-"

_VWOOOM_

Even from his peripheral vision Bolt knew instantly that Rhodonite had definitely heard that, her smile was washed off and was replaced by unease as her stance became more rigid. A moment came and a moment went before she called out to him again.

"Hey, I think we should _really_ get going now." Rhodonite anxiously called out to him again, louder this time to try and get his attention. Much to his dismay the others heard and had stopped walking, their attention now turning to them.

Rather than complying Bolt continued to sit there, his false smile gone and replaced with the hard resolve that had been previously hidden underneath it. The only movement he made the entire time being the subtle grab of a rock that lay beside him.

"Rhodonite, What's going o-"

_**VWOOOM** _

Rightile's concerns were cut off by the growing whine of scanners, indecision and fear paralyzing her and the rest of the group. Their prospects were slim - either they ran and left one of their own, or they stayed and wait for him to say _something_ as their window of escape rapidly began to close.

"Oh stars! A vision has shown me that Bolt plans to challenge an approaching threat!" Padparadscha worriedly announced her late premonition to the group.

"What?! Bolt please, we need to run now while there is still time!" Fluorite tried to reason with him, her concerned maternal demeanour making her plead so hard to deny.

But as the others opened their mouths to try and speak, Bolt gathered the willpower to ignore Fluorite's words before then holding up a hand to cut all of them off from speaking any further. He stood up and faced the off colours with a reply to each of them already forming in his mind "But why? Why run away in fear when we can so easily fight?" He stopped for a moment, now aiming his look towards the Rutile twins.

"Leftile, Rightile. As malformed as you two believe yourselves to be, both of you are still quartzes, I have been taught that your kind are born and bred warriors! If anything the question you should be wondering is why _shouldn't_ we fight?" Bolt told them, making sure to be stern but reassuring in both words and tone.

"Rhodonite! What of you?" He now turned his gaze to her. "Half of you may be a pearl, a showthing and servant made to order - but what of the other half? You have taught me rubies are grown to be guardians and protectors, so I ask you to take up arms and protect not some indifferent and haughty highborn, but those who truly care for you!"

"And Fluorite, you made up of so many gems. One of the lessons I have been taught is that in you, and Rhodonite's, cases fusion is an expression of love, but I have also been told that it is usually an avenue to greater strength. Surely being made of six gems would grant you enough strength to make these robonoids be all but fodder in your eyes!" He proclaimed with far more passion to try and convince the gentle giant of their group.

And at last came the greatest challenge, he concluded simplicity was probably best for this. "Padparadscha." An awkwardly long pause ensued as he almost didn't know what to say. "Tell me, honestly, where do you think running will eventually get us? I do not need some prophecy, only what is in your thoughts." His words somehow coming out equal parts grim and gentle.

Another pause began as Padparadscha's perception of time caught up to Bolt's words. "It may take a hundred, or a thousand years. But eventually, one by one, we will all… die." She replied solemnly. Though the answer was obvious, someone saying it made the truth feel all too real.

"See? If our ending is all the same, so if we are destined to burn away then we mustn't flicker in futility against the darkness until we are snuffed out by the bitter cold. No, instead we should burn so brightly that even our ashes will glow with such fury that they blind anyone who takes but a glance at them!"

The scene was almost comedic. Here he was only a few months old compared to the centuries to millennia old off colours, and in addition he was still a tad shorter than the Rutiles and Rhodonite were while being completely dwarfed by Fluorite. Then to add insult to injury his young, moderately high pitched voice did not do much to help his cause. Thankfully though, it seemed his programmed oratory skill and passive inspirational aura had been more than enough to make up for his, as of yet, otherwise uninspiring demeanour.

_**VWOOOM** _

Their attention was once more grabbed by the whining of no longer so distant scanners, by now the robonoids were on the other side of the canyon, and wherever their cyclopean scanners pointed towards was being bathed in the same terrifying red light that heralded shattering for any off colour gem caught in its gaze.

Bolt turned around to face the foe, his eyes locking onto the closest robonoid's position as he twisted his body slightly down and backwards, the arm holding the rock now stretched out wide. All the while his superhuman mind raced to calculate every little variable to make sure that the projectile connected with the machine in the most destructive way possible.

With a mighty swing he surged forwards, using his whole body to generate momentum he flung the rock with such force that it flew practically straight and cored the robonoid, its conical back crumpling then tearing inwards followed shortly by scrap metal and pulverized rock shooting out of the other end. It struck with such force that the debris it created travelled even further and got haphazardly buried into the wall beyond.

As the ruined robonoid came crashing down onto the rocky floor below its brethren stopped their scanning and turned towards the direction where the source of its demise had come from, their bright red scanners lighting up the wall above the group and menacingly travelling downwards as they sought to find whatever the cause may have been.

He knew the robonoids were too close now. "The time to run has ended, now we must make a stand or it will be all for nothing!" he called out a rallying cry.

Bolt looked around and to his relief the off colours, instead of shrinking away from danger, had elected to follow his example and picked up the few rocks that had naturally crumbled off from the walls over time and flung them at the robonoids. Though many of their shots missed, the innate strength of gem physiology ensured that whichever ones did strike struck hard, denting their shells and breaking parts within. Fluorite's shots were especially damaging, practically causing the robonoids to cave in on themselves.

However; their vigour soon faltered as one by one each robonoid made a disapproving groan, signalling the switch into combat mode as each of their gemstones were detected and marked as flawed by the cold, uncaring programming of the machines. Though as expected, the robonoid which had survived scanning Bolt stayed passive as he didn't possess a gemstone, but it did not live long enough to move on and scan the others as another rock from him crippled enough of its internal parts to disable it and send it careening down the canyon into open space below.

As the newly aggressive robonoids hovered over the canyon to close into attack range, the group soon found themselves suddenly out of projectiles. This was not exactly the glorious last stand they had imagined from Bolt's speech.

"What do we do now!" Rhodonite snapped at him. Though it wasn't totally her fault, this was not the end she imagined to meet, out of ammo and left to become a sitting rock whilst their opponents hovered over a canyon where they couldn't get to them.

"MOVE!" Was all he screamed out to the off colours as the robonoid's scanners switched from being red to glowing white. The group scarpered in all directions while Bolt, who hadn't been targeted, made a mad dash to unceremoniously dive and shove Padparadscha out of harm's way at the last minute. But it seemed he had been a few moments too slow, as the energy beam meant for Padparadscha managed to graze him and sear an ugly gash into the side of his head just as he crashed chin first into the cold hard floor.

In the meanwhile the other off colours had managed to get out of the other robonoid's beams in time, their power instead hammering into the already structurally unsound walls filled with exit holes from millennia worth of gem cultivation.

"Gah, sorry about that." Bolt silently muttered to Padparadscha as he bit through the blistering pain on his face. Looking around he saw the off colours had all survived the first wave of attack and the robonoids had done exactly as he wanted. A true smile coaxed itself through the pain and formed on Bolt's face as he bent down to grab one of the heftier rocks blown off from the wall and chucked it at the offending robonoid with all his might.

"Now it is a fair fight." He announced as he faced the off colours, the clanging of stone slamming into steel punctuating his point. Now only three of them were left standing, or rather hovering.

The remaining robonoid's programming ordered them to close the range to make sure they did not miss a second time, all the while charging their beams as they did so. The machine's actions made it abundantly clear their creators expected that their quarry would only ever run, never thinking that they would ever gain the spirit to fight back.

Fluorite usually was a gentler soul, though with herself and her friends in danger it seemed that it was all temporarily pushed aside in favour of simple self-preservation instincts. She grappled a robonoid, and using all four of her arms she crushed it as if it were a simple tin can before it had the opportunity to fire again.

Two left.

The Rutiles closed into melee range, and just as the eye-like beam was about to expel a charge of energy they leapt upwards and used their arms to forcefully bury a sharp rock deep into it, causing a catastrophic cascade of its internal machinery. The following explosion flung them to the ground and pelted their form with burning scrap. They were battered, but alive.

One left.

While the others contended with their own robonoids, Rhodonite had taken the time to grab ammo and add it to the ever growing pile of rocks that she cradled in her lower pair of arms, all the while her pearl half's instincts allowed her to perform a panicked ballet as she deftly dodged the beams from the robonoid which had targeted her.

Feeling she had gathered enough, her ruby half's instincts took over, making her stand her ground she turned to face the terrifying cyclopean glare of the robonoid before using her upper pair of arms to bombard it with a stony shower. Each time it tried to get a lock on it would be knocked out of position by a rocky projectile, over and over again, until eventually one of her shots pierced its outer shell and hit something vital underneath.

The robonoid seemed to sit still in the air for a moment, its indifferent gaze peering deep into her very gemstones. Another moment ticked by until electric sparks began to be emitted from the gash in its shell, heralding an explosion that sent more fiery debris flying out to litter the battlefield. The group looked around in disbelief, they had stood their ground, and lived to tell the tale.

However, the mood wasn't as merry as Bolt had thought it would have been. A short lived smile formed on his face as he readied yet another rousing speech congratulating the off colours in their courageous stand, but as he looked around the faces he was met with were not of jubilation or of accomplishment but rather of… well he couldn't quite pinpoint what mood in the air was but it felt of that it was made of varying parts disapproval, fear and shock from their close brush with death.

"Let's just… get going then." Bolt's words felt empty as they left his mouth. He meant well, he really did, all he wished to do was to show the off colours their potential. As the group marched on Bolt walked slightly behind them in guilt, he couldn't help but hold onto the feeling that he had been too idealistic in the idea of rushing his companions into a trial by fire, and in that rush he had inadvertently driven a wedge between them and him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> Because it is publicly available online I am currently using the Dornian Heresy AU (Credits to Aurelius Rex and whoever else worked with them + Bolter and chainsword magazine) as a reference for the version of Angron I am writing in this fic. To tell the truth their alternate portrayal of him, and especially his alternate childhood, was what actually inspired me to write this fic in the first place.
> 
> Apparently Rutile and Rutilated quartz are two different materials irl. But for the sake of simplicity I will go with the Rutiles being Rutilated quartz because the role of quartzes in gem society is known while the role of an actual Rutile remains a mystery and it will also tie in with their character arc in later chapters.
> 
> A final note I want to make here is that updates on this story will probably be quite slow as it is more of a hobby project and school for me is going to start again soon so I will have less time to work on this fic.


	4. Fallen Angel: Chapter 4

**The Human Zoo**

Holly Blue Agate had always worked with the utmost diligence in her solemn duty. She was put in charge of preserving the zoo, and to be put in charge of the zoo was to be put in charge of preserving a legacy, to be preserving _the_ legacy - that of Pink diamond.

For nearly six whole millennia she has held her vigil with the utmost dedication and reverence, and while not the same could be said for the barely adequate Earth-born quartzes of the zoo that were under her command, she had done her best to work around these obstacles to fulfil her station as best as she could.

And so she was practically baffled as she read and re-read the set of reports sent _directly_ to her by some lowly upstart of a Peridot - the staggering claims they made almost felt like stabbing accusations of her being derelict during duty. Supposedly there was an organic, perhaps even a human, somewhere in the lowest reaches on Homeworld itself. In truth Holly Blue was tempted to laugh when she first saw the title of the report, but as she combed through the evidence she could not help but be wracked with doubt and confusion.

By the second read she had thought that it was perhaps a ploy, some act by a rival who wanted to take her prestigious position as the overseer of the zoo. Holly Blue had some modicum of pride in the fact that she had never been the type to care much for the intricacies of court politics. As such she had little to fear in the way of genuine enemies, though it was a fact of life that jealous rivals would always be present no matter what.

Then again, members of the yellow court had their ambitions placed elsewhere, caring more for the grittier fields of work such as the sciences, soldiering or industry. Even after taking that in account, intrigue was rarely in their nature, instead they favoured to work with an eternal plain and stiff pragmatism to acquire their promotions.

After the third and fourth re-read she had calmed enough to care for the actual details of the report. By now realising that it was too ridiculous for anyone half competent in politics to have tried to have fabricated and even attempt to pass off as true, leaving the only other reason it had been sent being was that it was no joke, but a genuine report. Though after following that line of reasoning all which was left for her was the confusing as stars prospect of trying to track down a human roaming around the parts of homeworld most difficult to navigate and most hostile to organic life.

She sighed as her re-read of the report had reached the secondary information compiled by the Peridot. This human had supposedly been taken in by some off colours, including one of the most abhorrent fusions she had ever seen- six, six whole _different_ gems in one form! As censored as the information around such topics were, her status allowed her to be more privy to such things and she knew that she would certainly need quite the strength to back her up in order to 'pacify' them and the other off colours spotted harbouring the human.

Holly Blue rubbed her forehead as she momentarily entertained the prospect of simply letting the human expire, after all it was just one and making more of them was easier said than done with how quick they seemed to reproduce when left unchecked. But what then? What of the oddly durable bones they left behind? She mulled over the odds, they may have been small but give it a hundred, or a million cycles and eventually they could be found to be used as evidence against her in a trial.

No doubt it would leave a disastrous dark mark on her otherwise flawless career and Holly Blue knew that such an eventuality would mean rapid demotion for her at best... or being recycled at worst. She shuddered at the second possibility, to be crushed into shards and turned into nothing more than resources that would be put into creating another gem, likely meant to take her place.

It was a fate she was eager to avoid, and the realisation struck that there was no other possible course of action. Organics were fragile, as the overseer of the human zoo she knew that fact better than nearly any gem and so she understood there was little time, she had to act on this information now or never.

But if there was one thing that was truly sure about all of this, it was that she couldn't afford any risks. Holly Blue knew she could not bring that raucous rabble of rubble which were the quartzes under her command at the zoo. No, if she wanted this mission to succeed, then she needed to bring real quartzes to be with her for this mission.

Seeing as how she was already thinking of using her status to pull some help from the Yellow court in the form of that Peridot's robonoids as guides she thought it would not be amiss to recruit _her_ \- the quartz all other quartzes, and indeed any other soldier gem, aspired to be.

While it would take a significant amount of pulling to recruit someone such as them, it was just only a simple pick up job she was going to take them to - one that her entire career rested on, yes, but at least it meant that Holly Blue wouldn't have to borrow her for too long. Their daunting presence alone would be a great boon to the rest of the quartzes and a great demoraliser to those off colours should serious combat be met.

' _After all'_ She mentally spat. ' _Those deviants tend to get ideas…'_

#####

**Homeworld kindergartens, some time later**

Bolt stayed some distance behind the group, his gaze was lowered to the ground and his steps were slow and unmeasured as his mind was currently occupied elsewhere. From time to time he would look up from his shame and do a half hearted jog to keep up with the off colours if he fell too far behind.

' _Damned shortsighted idiot, what did you think was going to happen?!'_ He mentally kicked himself. Now that he had been given time to think, he realised that he had practically dragged the off colours to have a staring contest with death at his own behest. What else did he expect to be greeted with afterwards? To be congratulated with a parade and be given his own pearl on a crystal podium?

He let out an ever so silent hollow chuckle as he mulled over how ridiculous that all sounded - he'd been a fool, a well meaning one, but a fool nonetheless. His thoughts drifted back to events prior, even as he prepared to laud the off colours on their victory he could remember how he still felt his heart sink at how close Padparadscha had gotten to being shattered, at how close she had gotten to being shattered because of _him_. While his innate healing factors soon sealed the wound dealt by the energy beam, the ugly scar it had left on his left temple would serve as a haunting reminder of his folly for the rest of his days.

Bolt didn't want to think of it, but that damned scar constantly reminded him that if he had only been a moment too late then perhaps all that would have been left of Padparadscha would be a small pile of glittering orange shards clattering in his hands as he mourned her passing. He felt another pang of guilt claw at his chest as another thought wormed its way into his mind - what would have the other off colours thought of him if that was what had come to pass?

As if only to guilt him further his mind raced to another recent memory, what if some of the debris from when the shattering robonoids caused the rock wall to fall had hit one of the off colours' gemstones? Even if they were only cracked and not totally shattered there would have been little any of them could do.

Sure, he had heard those few stories of the rebellion on Earth that the off colours told him and eachother to keep their spirits up. Supposedly their leader had somehow found a way to heal cracked gems and that was how they managed to fight a protracted guerrilla war for so long despite being outnumbered by the Empire stars knows how many to one. But even if that was the case, they were still a whole galaxy away from Homeworld, and though he didn't exactly know what a galaxy was, it certainly sounded far.

For but a moment he thought about what it must be like to live on that planet, 'Earth', the stories described it as a wonderful place. Despite not knowing much about exact details, with the rebels victorious the off colours had envisioned it as a place where gems of all kinds who were liberated by the rebels roamed free and lived in harmony with the native organics.

It was thought that some of them were possibly even capable of complex emotions and intelligence, much like how gems and he are - 'humans' they were apparently called. He had also heard of how the sky shone brilliantly with a calming blue light for a time before giving way to the twinkling twilight of open space in a regular cycle. It must have been great, to be on the surface of such a beautiful world and, most of all, to be free to actually enjoy it.

The idea almost brought a ghost of a smile back on his face before he dragged himself crashing back down to reality. There was no way he or the off colours could ever get off Homeworld, not without at least one of them being killed or captured in the process. No, the only lands he would ever know are the desolate crags and pockmarked walls of the kindergartens, the only sights he would see are their lightless halls… but if there was one thing only Homeworld could provide that he truly wished he could see, it was the twinkling shards of the diamonds in his own hands.

Bolt scrunched his face and shook his head as he instantly cut that line of thought, for he quickly realised it was borne of the same unfettered idealism that had nearly fuelled him to inadvertently offer up the off colours to the robonoids to die. They couldn't possibly tear down the diamonds to take their freedom on their own, but what could they do besides running? He could not see a way forward that didn't involve any harm befalling those he cared so dearly for.

Escape? There was little hope of them getting to a starport or warp hub without instantly being picked out from the crowds of prim and proper gems above. Hide? He already knew the answer to that, the only question was how long could they last. Ask? Now that was the most hopeless option he had thought of, why would the diamonds of all gems even parley with a motley band of off colours and an organic, besides as a way of humouring them before ordering their arrest, likely followed by recycling the off colours and an execution for him.

He sighed hard before sinking deeper and deeper into lamentation. He lost focus on all else that was around him, his steps marched to an increasingly inconstant rhythm. His breathing became tightened and his eyes remained aimed on the dusty floor, they stayed barely open, almost as if his eyelids were sagging from the burden of his thoughts. But in his stupor Bolt had forgotten all about the off colours even though they were just a short ways ahead.

The off colours, shaken as they were by his actions, held no true grudge against Bolt. In fact they had made sure to keep track of their sullen little sibling, each individually turning their head backwards just to make sure he didn't fall too far behind the group or had gotten lost.

"Do you think that Bolt…" "might have been right?" The Rutile twins addressed the others with a measure of uncertainty, being the first to break the weighted silence that had been crushing the group since the incident. Though they were careful not to say too much, just enough to hopefully prompt a conversation.

Rhodonite was the first to react in any way, she looked at them for a moment before turning back to face forwards. Her features were distant and wearied, the choking shroud of death she felt as the robonoid's scanner fell on her still fresh in her mind. Yet with enough scrutiny one could tell from a subtle change in her expression that she heard the Rutiles and had at least begun to contemplate her feelings on the subject of Bolt's actions. His words replayed over and over in her head, she knew he was right- half of her was just a Pearl, a meek servant meant to do nothing more than to lick the boots of whichever upper crust they had been gifted to.

" _But what of the other half?"_ The quote drifted through her mind. "Yeah… but what of the other half?" She quietly mouthed off to herself, she looked down and felt the Ruby gemstone embedded in her belly with her hand. Hot-headed as they could - literally - be sometimes, rubies were still manufactured to be steadfast and loyal guards. Willing to lay their life down for those they had been assigned to protect.

_'Where had that inner fire gone?'_ Rhodonite thought as she looked back in near shame at her whole time as a fugitive. Despite that, a small spark of pride beaconed from within, she looked back to the recent incident, she had managed to stand her ground and protect those who genuinely cared for her existence rather than some 'haughty highborn' as Bolt had so bluntly put it.

Despite her moment of pride, Rhodonite couldn't help but let out a pessimistic sigh. Even if she could somehow find a way to become powerful enough to battle entire armies alone, what was it all against the near endless legions of Homeworld's unfeeling hordes of soldiers and machinery?

Fluorite, though speaking in a slow perpetual drawl, had always been one known to quickly speak her mind. But even she was currently conflicted and lost for what to say, she briefly looked back to Bolt before turning forwards again. She hearkened back to his speech, specifically honing in on his words about her. In her and her components' long lives they had all been called many things by others: abomination, defective, aberrant.

Though never 'strong', strong was something meant to refer to quartzes, topazes, the diamonds - not some hodgepodge fusion. But as her doubts began to resurface she could remember clear as glass the sheer conviction that Bolt had seared into his words. She felt oddly assured that what he told her was something that could not be faked. At that, she was sure that he truly did mean what he said.

"Yes, yes I think- no I'm sure he is." Padparadscha, surprisingly, answered first with confidence.

One by one the other off colours turned to the smallest member of their ragtag group, each surprised by the hard certainty she had put in her words and curious as to where she would go next.

"What? As grand as his speech was, It's not as if he _actually_ wanted us to immediately take up arms and do something like charge the diamond palace alone. What he wants from us is simple, and I've seen it in his mind. He cares about us, alot, and he is _tired_ of always seeing us being so- so afraid, so ashamed, so hopeless..." She teetered off.

"But Pad, what can we do? Even if we do fight back against the robonoids, what does it really accomplish? They're just machines and there are still thousands more that can be thrown at us and the rest of the Empire wouldn't even think to bat an eye" Rhodonite mumbled.

"I don't think that's what Bolt meant, when we fight we don't have to win-" Rightile started "We can fight to… prove a point. That we aren't weak, or afraid." Leftile finished after finding the right words to say.

"I think we're already proving a point to the Empire as it is. Just look at all of us, two inter-gem fusions, two anomalies and an organic yet here we are. For all the might Homeworld has we're still alive after defying their laws, I think that's winning enough. " Fluorite said before cracking an encouraging smile.

"Fluorite is right. Forget what I said about dying in a blaze of glory, forget about what homeworld thinks about people like us- but remember one thing; no matter how crushing the darkness may become we will still always have eachother to light the way." Bolt decided to pitch in after walking a bit closer to the group, finally confident that the off-colours held no strong grudge against him. His posture seemed better too, appearing as if he had some life injected back into him.

"You know, the way you always seem to talk makes me think that if you were made as one, then you'd make for a great upper crust. Just add in some fancy over the top appearance modifiers and then you're good to go." Rhodonite commented with jesting sarcasm.

"Hmm." Bolt mulled over the words for a moment. "Though I had no idea that the upper crusts could have the capacity to care for any of their underlings." He jokingly shot back. "Not that any of you are my underlings."

The two's jabs at the elite soon had the rest of the group in hushed guffaws. But at the thought of upper crust attitude towards those under them Rhodonite was briefly met with the bitter memories about her components' former employer, Morganite, and how quickly she had tried to have them captured and put on trial once they were found fused merely to save her own shards. She quickly waved the errant thoughts off and joined in with the others, not wanting to sour the rare lightened mood with the ghosts of the past.

_VWOOOM_

The jovial atmosphere around the group was soon blown away as the dreaded hum of robonoids was once more heard echoing across the cavernous halls of the kindergartens, causing them all to immediately stop dead in their tracks just before crossing a rock bridge. Much to Bolt's surprise and relief he didn't hear footsteps rapidly growing quieter as the off colours ran in the other direction, but more worryingly he instead heard footsteps growing louder and louder from the tunnel in front of them.

Bolt's keen eyes honed in on the tunnel. He saw the floating form of three objects - likely robonoids, but of a kind he had never seen before, though to be fair he had only ever seen one type in his short time alive. Despite the familiar threat of robonoids, what worried him more were the rapidly approaching figures whose forms became more and more clear as they drew closer and closer to the group. As he squinted he could make out one blue, one orange and five purple shapes running out from the dark tunnel on the other side of the bridge.

The robonoids flew out first giving Bolt a clearer view of his trackers, they were square in shape and made of a green tinted metal while their 'eye' glowed with an analytical yellow rather than the harsh red of the conical robonoids he had grown so used to meeting. Finally, when the other figures had come out of the darkened tunnel and into the relative light at the other end of the bridge his deepest fears were confirmed - other gems had been sent after them. An Agate, a Jasper and five amethysts if his foundational knowledge on gem types was correct.

It was a squad of soldiers, with a sergeant to lead them.

"Finally, there it is." He heard the Agate call out with barely contained impatience to no one in particular.

The Agate straightened her posture and cleared her throat before directing a disgusted glare at the group. "Attention off colour scum! You are all under arrest for numerous charges, including: The destruction of state property, illicit inter-gem fusion, harbouring defective individuals from the judgement, and most heinous of all:" The Agate paused for a moment, as if to summon all the venom in her voice that she could muster.

"The unlawful possession of a Diamond's - the late Pink Diamond, might I add - property in the form of that human. Submit now, and your sentence shall be swift and painless. Refusal shall be met with _immediate_ shatteri…"

At the same time that the Agate sputtered off from her tirade at the off-colours Bolt saw a temporary, but bright glow from his peripheral vision. The Agate stared at the space behind him with momentary shock before snapping back into a disciplined hatred. Meanwhile, as stoic as they were before, the enormous specimen of a warrior that was the Jasper beside her began staring at the same area with what could only be described as a barely contained feral snarl.

**"Over my broken shards.** " Bolt heard an unfamiliar voice call out from behind him, he turned around and saw an enormous teal coloured individual...s?

"Who are you?" Though his curiosity was piqued he still spoke in a neutral greeting tone.

The right head of the large fusion looked down at him while the other head remained squarely affixed on the group's pursuers. The right head's anger dissipated before they chuckled a small bit as they placed their bottom right arm over his shoulder.

"You can call me Hydrazine, but I think you've already met _us_ before." This 'Hydrazine's' right head answered as she gestured to the myriad of glistening gemstones embedded in her form with her upper right arm.

After that it didn't take long for Bolt's mind to click. As soon as it did, despite his current situation, he couldn't help but let out a giddy smile while staring glassy-eyed at the fusion. They were fighting back.

_They were fighting back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> Sorry for not having updated for so long, all my schoolwork has left me with little time, and the time that I have gotten I've spent writing chapter 5 instead of working on this chapter. There is a fight scene in it, so finally some genuine action at last, though it will be the first fight scene I've ever written so it may be lacking in some ways but hopefully it'll still be a good read.
> 
> Hydrazine was a leftover Idea from when I still intended to use Alpharius and Omegon, but I felt that they fit too well just to chuck away totally. Though hydrazine is normally a liquid, crystals can be formed from it, those crystals are somewhat teal coloured, the Rutile twins have multiple heads and the crystals literally have 'hydra' in their name.


	5. Fallen Angel: Chapter 5

_They were fighting back._

Bolt could not help but stare at the new fusion in wonder, if only for a short time. His eyes followed Hydrazine's arm as she gestured to their various gemstones, he could easily pick out the distinctive Y shaped gemstone of the Rutile twins sitting neatly atop Rhodonite's ruby half, each of which were embedded in the fusion's belly. Padparadscha's was on the back of the lower right hand which was currently perched on his shoulder. Finally there was Rhodonite's Pearl half, which was placed at the collar, just a little below where the neck of the fusion branched off in two.

Bolt could feel a soothing heat emanating from Hydrazine's enormous gloved hand as they gently held his shoulder to reassure him, he had to agree, it felt great to have someone so powerful looking out for him. But that feeling diminished as he turned back around, though the squad of Amethysts looked on only with stoic disgust, the Agate looked as if she was just about ready to shatter them all and Bolt was quite sure the Jasper couldn't snarl any harder without shapeshifting even if she tried.

He knew fusions were strong, especially ones of Hydrazine and Fluorite's size, but they had little experience in combat. On the other hand their opponents were manufactured and programmed for war.

The pang of guilt returned as he remembered the last time their lives were in peril, he hastily attempted to shove it away using reason, but he was met with minimal success. Though Bolt understood the current situation was not directly his own fault, he now knew from the Agate's words that it was his existence that led to them being pursued, and the very idea of it chafed at him deep inside.

After failing to simply push away his potent emotions, he at least attempted to at least stomach them for as long as he could. Though not as imposing as the two literal behemoths beside him, he felt that he still had a responsibility for their safety, and he resolved that he would do his damndest to protect the off colours.

Holly Blue shot a look at Jasper that practically said 'do you see why I needed your help now?' Which caused her to positively snap.

"Fusion, Fusion, FUSION! That's all you DEFECTS ever know!" Jasper shouted in her trademark harsh and gravelly voice as she pointed an accusatory finger first to Hydrazine and then to Fluorite. "But it doesn't matter, during the war I destroyed many abominations like you two on my own, and I can do it again." She added with a hard chuckle at the end. Though she didn't even bother addressing Bolt, likely seeing him as a non-threat.

Though Hydrazine's left head kept its stoic vigil, her right head turned away from addressing Bolt while a smug laugh left their mouth.

"And all your kind ever knows is how to lap up to your superior's orders." The right head brazenly commented.

"Hmmph, I can only agree." Fluorite added. Their brusque comments caused Jasper to rumble with a guttural, almost ursine growl.

"Do remember this is a recovery mission. So if you could, try not to let your aggression get to you. I require that organic to be taken back intact." Holly Blue said to Jasper before her temper could boil over, and though she comfortably outranked Jasper, Holly Blue sounded nearly hesitant to reprimand the famous old war hero.

A standoff was formed and it carried on for a time without both sides moving an inch. The only movements made was at the beginning with either side slipping into a combat stance, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. Though admittedly Bolt and the off colours' stances were not the best in this regard with them having not seen combat in centuries, if at all. Both sides stared eachother down from opposite sides of the rocky bridge, tensely waiting for someone to make the first move.

After what felt like an eternity Holly Blue let out a resigned sigh and barked an order to one of the Amethysts who then proceeded to dump a crate made of some unspecified blue metal that they had been carrying in front of her. Holly Blue then opened it and took out… well Bolt didn't quite know what it was but it was purple and it smelt quite good, which was new as all Bolt had ever smelt before was the rust from fallen scrap and the hint of rock salt that was ever present in the kindergartens, and they weren't exactly the most appealing scents.

Holly Blue crouched down to a squat and held out the purple thing in her hand in Bolt's direction, her staunch attitude having done a complete turn around, going from a toughened officer to a fresh out of the ground gem.

"Come here, come here human! you like the fruits don't you?" She said with faux enthusiasm as she wiggled the purple 'fruit', as he now understood it was called, in an attempt to lure Bolt to her. Though the fact that she used the term 'human' to refer to him twice now was a revelation, was that what he was this whole time? One of those humans who were supposedly only native to Earth? The very idea brought up a myriad of questions, with the two most prominent being through what methods was he placed on Homeworld undetected, and if there was a way to use it to get back.

His moment of surprise was soon over as he filed the idea away to ponder on for the future, instead choosing to focus his mind on the dire situation in front of him. First and foremost, did she think him to be _that_ dense to fall for such an obvious ruse? Well if she thought him to be a fool then he may as well play the part. He calmly turned his head to Fluorite and Hydrazine and put up the opened palm of his right hand gently to them as if to say 'I know what I'm doing'. The two were hesitant at first, but they soon gave him a reluctant nod.

With the all clear given Bolt turned back to face his pursuers where he proceeded to put on an act of false fear and innocence. While his body was already positively corded with hyperdense muscle, his face still had that soft and glowy childlike quality to it that increased the believability of his act by magnitudes.

Bolt made sure to play every bit of his role as well as he could. He made a purposely nervous and slow walk with his hands close to his body and clasped around eachother to make himself look as small as possible, all the while paying special attention to the 'fruit' in the Agate's hand to make her think that he had fallen for her ploy.

"Good human! Come on then, you want to come home don't you?" She said while patting the ground in front of her. Bolt took a deep inhale and resisted the urge to laugh, if anyone among them was dense it was her.

Despite that, he hadn't forgotten about the amethysts and Jasper. He stole glances at them more times than one, and whenever he did he made sure to stop walking and stare for a while to make it seem as if he was afraid of approaching the bulky soldiers. To his relief they all seemed more fixed on the off colours, likely deeming them the bigger threat. Good, he would need all the time he could get to escape after doing what he planned to do.

"Yes! There we go, who's a good human?" The Agate continued to chide him.

At last he arrived at the Agate, he kneeled down in front of her, his seemingly innocent eyes met the fruit and analysed it with fake curiosity for a time. Then in an instant his pretence of childlike innocence vanished, he did an unnaturally swift and hard low sweep of his legs which connected with an echoing crack on the Agate's ankle, causing her to crash onto ground with an undignified yelp. Bolt followed up by grabbing her left leg with both of his arms. He leaned backwards and then by using his entire body mass to generate enough momentum he spun around twice before letting go of the Agate, making her fly into the squad of Amethysts behind her.

But just as he turned around to run back to the off colours he felt a sudden crushing sensation surround his neck, he looked down as far as he could and saw an enormous orange hand clasped around him and in an instant he knew exactly who it was, the Jasper. She lifted him off the ground and turned him around to face her.

"Huh, I remember some of you pitiful humans trying in vain to fight side by side with those Crystal gems to defend your worthless world. I remember pulping a few of them too, how easily crushed your kind are. Even after being armed and armoured by the rebels your people were still so weak. I wonder what value Rose Quartz saw in your kind that caused her to rebel, because I certainly see none." Jasper said with barely contained contempt as orange light coalesced around her head when she summoned her crash helmet, her sharp eyes bearing down on Bolt through the transparent orange visor.

"I've got to admit, that was a smart trick on your part- but that's all it was, a trick! Looks like those defects really got to you, huh? Because that's all they ever know, they're too _weak_ to defy the Diamond's will head on so they have to resort to only using cheap, dirty tricks!" She gripped his neck tighter and tighter with each phrase she shouted, all the while spittle flew into Bolt's defiant face.

"Spare me your talk, beast. If you are as grand as you claim you are, then act on your words, or are they all you have?" Bolt goaded her in return, his words came out choked but were still full of distaste, though it only caused Jasper to raise her mouth in a toothy smile.

"Gladly"

That was all Jasper said as she growled and reared her head back and slammed her helmet into Bolt's face. As the ram on the front of it connected squarely onto his nose Bolt's head flew backwards as a spray of spit flew out of his clamped mouth while a thin stream of blood momentarily flowed out of his nostrils, though it was not long before the stream dried up as his larraman cells rushed to the sites of damage to begin the process of patching up his injuries.

Despite not having been fully knocked out he still felt dazed, his head was ringing and he could smell and taste a distinct hint of iron in his nose and mouth. Bolt felt his body be flung around as Jasper swung backwards and began walking in the direction of the still downed squad of amethysts, all the while her piston like grip continued to clamp around his throat.

He resisted the urge to try panic, knowing Jasper could likely keep him pinned even if he tried to struggle. So instead he took the opportunity to play a farce on her by pretending to have been knocked out, he used the few seconds this granted him to mentally assess the damage he had taken and so decide the best course of action accordingly.

But as he felt pain pulse from each individual wound, he felt something else, something loose in his mouth. His tongue played around with it for a while before he deduced it was a cracked piece of tooth, and from how thin and sharp it felt like it had likely come from one of his incisors. At that moment an idea sprung in his mind.

He would have normally been somewhat upset at the injury, but now he only inwardly smiled at the opportunity granted to him. Bolt used his tongue to place the piece of tooth in position and then took in a hefty huff of air through his nose as subtly as he could. He woke from his false faint and shot a vile glare at Jasper, and before her expression could even change to react to him 'waking up' he blew out the tooth chip with such speed that it punched a hole clean through Jasper's visor and buried itself deep into her right eye.

She let go of him and staggered back, the enormous soldier roared in fury while clasping futilely at her damaged visor, the acidic spit produced by Bolt's betcher's gland working in tandem with the jagged piece of debris lodged in her eye to cause Jasper excruciating pain. Now that she had let go of him he then landed deftly on the ground and immediately sprinted back to the company of the Fluorite and Hydrazine before any of the amethysts or the Agate could grab a hold of him again.

Holly Blue stood up and recovered from her stupor just in time to see Jasper clutching the right side of her face while the human had run back to those damned off colours. It wasn't hard for her to deduce what had happened, but in that case how had a human of all things managed to bring low, out of all gems, Jasper and herself? She was beyond reasoning at this point, she needed this human back or all six millennia of her work would be for naught.

"Well?! What are you doing just standing there? MOVE YOU PEBBLES!" She snapped at the Amethyst squad, the five gems instantly somersaulted into the air one after the other and landed in a pyramid formation. Their forms momentarily shone as one and then they combined to fuse into a single enormous amethyst, one that stretched more than a few feet above Hydrazine and had far more bulk. They proceeded to summon their weapon, an enormous twin headed battleaxe, before lumbering onwards in Hydrazine's direction.

Holly Blue herself clasped one arm around to the back of her head where her gemstone was and summoned her electric whip, then with the other she drew the destabilizer that had been tied to the back of her hip. A single hit from one should be enough to poof any single gem or fusion, no matter how large, allowing for easy capture. She looked at the large six gemmed off colour and the fearful expression they had told Holly Blue that they knew exactly what the crackling two pronged yellow device in her hand could do.

Jasper momentarily dissipated her helmet before shapeshifting her eye in such a way that it pushed the piece of tooth out. Though the acidic spit proved more difficult to clean out, made evident by the thin veins of decay already marbling Jasper's newly repaired eye as the acid that had stubbornly clung on slowly ate away at her physical form. As soon as she felt the tooth pop out she speedily re-summoned her helmet and stared down Bolt with a murderous glare for a few heavy moments, wishing to intimidate him into surrender.

"Come then, what are you stalling for - fear? If I am, in your own words, simply some 'pitiful human' then what is there to be afraid of?" Bolt took a decisive jab at Jasper's ego.

"Fine, If you're so eager then I'll teach you your place _runt_." She growled out through gritted teeth, barely contained rage seeping into each word.

Jasper curled up into a ball and in the blink of an eye she flew forwards with terrifying speed at Bolt using her signature comet charge. Her form would have been all but a bright blur to any normal human or even many gems, but little did she or anyone present know - Bolt was no normal human. His enhanced fight or flight instincts kicked in, superconducting nerves worked to speed up his reaction time enough that, from his perspective, Jasper instantly slowed from being a glowing fuzzy ball to the point that he could see the disturbingly maniacal grin plastered on her face as she rolled forwards to meet him in combat, likely eager to teach Bolt his place by beating him to the ground for his insult.

Though the sheer speed of her charge meant that Jasper still moved towards him at an alarming rate, even from his view. But if there was at least one thing the extra time his reaction speed gave him, it was that it allowed his augmented body to brace him for the inevitable clash - enough bioengineered hormones and synthetic performance enhancing chemicals to overdose an adult rhino twice over began coursing through his veins and into his organs - supercharging them with the potential to perform feats of frightful might against his rapidly approaching adversary.

Even though Jasper was barreling towards him, Bolt still took the time to analyse his surroundings, just to make sure he knew how the off colours were faring so far. His head was drifting around in slow motion throughout the craggy battlefield where they were making their stand. The cubic robonoids that had come with their pursuers seemed to watch as spectators, likely streaming their life or death struggle to some uncaring viewer.

He first looked to Hydrazine, anxious to see how the new fusion was holding against her larger foe. She was locked in a mortal struggle with the amethyst fusion, her top pair of arms and even one head were clamped around the shaft of the battleaxe trying to prevent it from coming down and decapitating them.

Though curiously Fluorite looked to fare little better despite the huge disparity in size between her and the Agate, she looked incredibly reluctant to get anywhere even near the officer, and it was not starkly obvious why. However, the amount of aggression the Agate was using the small yellow weapon in her hand coupled with how Fluorite always avoided it with fervent caution each time it was jabbed at her made him conclude that the weapon likely was far more dangerous than what its minimal profile initially suggested.

Despite his worries about his companions, he reluctantly took his gaze away from them and onto Jasper. She had finally drawn close enough and as Jasper did she uncoiled out of her roll, using her gathered speed to continue flying forwards. She thrust out her right arm, her hand already tightly wound into a fist, Jasper was readying to use her gathered momentum to plunge a knockout blow squarely into Bolt's head

While her charge certainly had enough power behind it to able to put his lights out for quite some time despite his durability, in her enthusiasm to slake her bloodthirst Jasper had not accounted for how the other parts of her opponent's anomalous physiology would come into play.

Bolt knew better than to try and stop her head on, instead he ran towards Jasper to pretend that he was going to meet her in direct combat, but at the last possible moment he slid sideways and grabbed Jasper's jutted out arm - what he had in mind was not without great risk - but greatly effective if it would work. At the same time as he grabbed her arm Bolt dug both of his heels onto the rocky floor and the pair soon spun in a deadly duet with him at its centre, he could feel layers of the skin on his hands and heels being rubbed raw or totally peeled off by friction burn, but he gritted through it all regardless.

Whilst they spun around Bolt slowly lifted his arms and with each circle they finished Jasper was gradually being raised higher and higher, once the fifth circle had passed Bolt mentally judged that she had flown up high enough for his purposes. He anchored his feet flat on the ground, letting the increased friction painfully slow the two's dance down to a manageable speed before he then slammed the still moving Jasper down in an overhead smash. The orange titan smacked down in front of him, forming a crater as she crashed back first on the cold hard ground.

Not wishing to give his opponent any leeway Bolt instantly sprinted over to where Jasper lay. Each footstep he took on his nearly skinned bare feet burnt like hot coals, despite this his hatred for the Empire and wish to defend the off colours allowed Bolt the willpower to bite through it. Once he arrived he crouched over her neck and proceeded to tear off her crash helmet, Bolt began savagely bludgeoning Jasper with their own wargear, raining down blow after blow on her face as she struggled to orient herself.

"Pitiful? If anyone is pitiful it is you, little less than a crony sent to murder the innocent, but why? I'll tell you why! For all your strength and skill, all that you are is nothing more than a thrall, blindly adhering to your _shimmering slave master's_ will!" Bolt shot back at Jasper, putting special emphasis on the phrase meant to be in reference to the diamonds. By now he had struck Jasper twice on the throat and thrice on each cheek before she could even respond.

His scathing words seemed to light an inferno in Jasper, the battered soldier was enraged at the audacity of the organic to be mocking her and the diamonds. To his misfortune Bolt was still a child, an absurdly strong child but a child nonetheless, and he was still too small to have totally pinned down Jasper's arms without also stopping his attack. She used this fact to her advantage, raising an arm Jasper grabbed her crash helmet by the ram as it plunged down and soon after her other arm flew from the periphery to rip the helmet out of Bolt's grasp, though he replied by kicking it out of her hand.

"YOU DAMN ORGANIC, I'LL SHOW YOU WH- HRRK!" She suddenly choked on her words. As she was about to berate him Bolt quickly sucked on his index finger and to Jasper's wide eyed surprise he rammed it right into her opened mouth to silence her. His acid covered nail soon began ripping into the roof of her mouth, forcing the caustic liquid that was his spit to burn deeply into every tear and wound that he brutally reaved into her mouth.

"Show me what- courage, honour or whatever other actually commendable traits you foolishly think your kind has in droves?" Bolt stopped ripping at her mouth when he asked Jasper, now deciding to also begin ripping into the very foundations of her beliefs.

"WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT COURAGE?! Do you even know how many different campaigns on hundreds of planets I have fought on, how many of you inferior organics I have broken with my own hands? You should be thankful my mission objectives are preventing me from adding you to that list, OTHERWISE YOU WOULD NOT BE ANY DIFFERENT!" Jasper managed to gurgle out.

"And honour." She rumbled the words out. "Neither you or those _defects know_ the first thing about honour. WHAT HONOUR DO ANY OF YOU HAVE, HUH?! What honour do you have in disgracing the order imposed on the universe by diamonds with your flawed existence? Look at me, I HAVE HONOUR- THE HONOUR OF HAVING A PURPOSE IN THE DIAMONDS' VISION, MEANWHILE YOU HUMANS SERVE NO PURPOSE BUT TO BE PUT IN A DISPLAY!" She shouted at Bolt, cold spittle flying into his face with each word she roared out.

"Hmph, tell me then - is there truly any courage to be shown in defeating those you believe to be far your inferior? Is there any honour in being a serf who is seen as worthless beyond their purpose by the same glittering tyrants they so obediently serve?" Bolt rhetorically questioned. Judging from Jasper's reaction, the implication of his words had gotten through. She was huffing in scores of air, ready to give him the berating of the century.

"I have wasted my time it seems. Too indoctrinated to learn any better, too fixated to have even thought about it." Bolt coldly whispered as he lazily shook his head to Jasper. He could feel her take in a gulp of air and realising what she would soon do, he plunged his index finger back in and ripped at her mouth again before she could loudly retort against him for another time. He drew his spare hand upwards, ready to drop a hundred heavy handed strikes in speedy succession to shatter the gemstone that made up her nose.

Despite the veracity of his words Jasper paid them little heed, for rage and fanaticism clouded her mind. She was outraged at the idea that an organic much smaller than her had even managed to last this long or deal this much damage against her. She began justifying simply murdering him to be done with it, it was only one human anyway, how many hundreds more would be produced in only a few cycles? Jasper decided she would break him for his insults, both against her and the diamond authority.

As he was about to land the first punch on her face his arm was suddenly stopped as it was crushed by Jasper's vice like grip, she followed that by lifting her head to take half of his hand in her maw and biting down hard as she could, all the while gnashing her teeth to cause maximum pain. Bolt first yelped in agony, then in surprise as Jasper spat out his hand and abruptly stood upright with a spin before flinging her far smaller adversary in the direction of the off colours. His limp body collided with the wall behind them, leaving a human shaped impression full of cracks into the unstable rock face as he did.

Bolt tested his now very sore arm by moving it ever so slightly, only to grimace as his nerves screeched in fiery protest at even the most minute movement. He tried to muster the fortitude to stand back up, but his knackered body reciprocated with little else aside from a flood of aches and pains. Failing that he at least made an effort to prop himself upwards against the wall, Bolt clumsily placed his torn and bleeding hand onto the wall behind him in an attempt to hoist himself back onto his feet, the precious ichor of the Primarch staining the wall as he did.

Though as he did he felt the damaged rock face shift and move ever so slightly under his grasp. His hearts soon began beating in panic as he was suddenly filled with a new panicked determination to stand up as fast as he could, for even in his disoriented state he could still understand what the noises made by the creaking rock implied.

But it was too late, at first only a low rumble could be heard, then only an instant afterwards many terrible cracks resonated through the air as the rifts formed by his impact grew and tore themselves larger and larger. Then as suddenly as it began, a monumental amount of rubble broke off from the walls and began cascading onto him.

He only had enough time to look upwards to see the falling debris that was about to crush him before he was hit in the face by near a dozen blocks of stone one after the other. He fell to the ground and in a futile attempt to defend himself he held out his arms to parry the falling cliff face, only to scream in pain as an even larger rock impacted directly into his already broken arm. He helplessly laid on the ground he saw his view get dimmer and dimmer as more and more rubble collapsed over him. He felt his strength failing as weight was continually added to the pile, and soon enough he felt his willpower wane too.

"BOLT!" He could have sworn he heard a muffled wail shout out his name as he drifted into unconsciousness.


	6. Fallen Angel: Chapter 6

Hydrazine knew she was soon to be locked in mortal combat with the brute of a fusion that was the mega amethyst. Though her relatively smaller frame could do little against the sheer physical might possessed by quartzes, she at least partially compensated for it by having two pairs of arms to attack with, along with two heads to keep track of the battlefield with far more ease than most.

As the lumbering behemoth came into striking range it was not hard to predict what they were going to do next. The amethyst brought her axe down in a two handed overhead chop that Hydrazine easily evaded by taking a few steps backwards, but moments later Hydrazine was nearly bisected at the torso when they barely dodged the axe's second approach, the amethyst having swung it around in a wide arc from her hip.

Hydrazine knew she couldn't keep on the defensive for too long otherwise she would have no more ground to fall back on, and so as her slower opponent brought the axe upwards once more she ran forwards and with a leap Hydrazine landed an uppercut on them with her upper right arm. It was not the most well aimed uppercut, in fact it mostly struck the purple giant in the neck, but it had the desired effect. The amethyst stumbled backwards a few steps giving Hydrazine a chance to breathe.

And as she did a few wisps of crackling flame escaped her lips, catching her in surprise. Neither she nor her opponent knew it, but a key component in the fuel that primitive human spacecraft used is hydrazine, and it was quite a volatile one at that. The amethyst soon regained their senses and came barrelling towards her at a frightful pace, axe held up in the air and ready to come down to split her in two. Thinking quickly Hydrazine took in a deep inhale, holding in her breath and preparing to stand her ground.

The amethyst brought the axe down for a killing blow, but Hydrazine caught it in her hands by the shaft as it was about to descend on her left head. Though even her strength could not match that of the larger dedicated war fusion, and inch by inch her grip was forced back until her left head was forced to join in with the battle by gripping the axe with its teeth. Even then, she could feel the axe still slowly sliding downwards as the amethyst increased the force behind her assault - it was now or never. Hydrazine's mouths began glowing with an intense blue and yellow flame like a lit blowtorch.

She proceeded to open her maw as wide as possible before exhaling as heavily as she could. It forced a veritable firestorm out of both of her mouths that stopped the amethyst's attack dead in its tracks as they instead brought their axe up in a futile attempt to shield themselves from the coruscation. Hydrazine's fire was unlike the true fire of other pyrokinetic gems, instead her's was more of a burning liquid fuel meaning that didn't dissipate once striking her opponent, but rather splashed onto them while continuing to burn

As she ran out of breath the veil of flame began to dissipate, but as it did a pair of enormous fists came cutting through followed by the rest of Hydrazine's form soon after. They had jumped upwards and brought her fists crashing down on top of the amethyst's head before then landing and quickly kicking their shins hard enough to smash their lower leg backwards, causing their foot to fly off the ground.

The unexpected follow up attack forced the amethyst to lost their balance and fall over onto the floor, making them drop their axe on the floor. Hydrazine then used her bulkier upper pair of arms - likely coming from Rhodonite's ruby half - to deadlift the still downed amethyst and throw them all the way to the other end of the rock bridge.

When she used the time this allotted her to assess the situation Hydrazine felt her gemstones crackle in nervousness when she saw Fluorite slowly being pushed back to the wall by Holly Blue who had one of the dreaded destabilisers held in her hand. Thinking on her feet, she picked up the enormous axe that the amethyst fusion had dropped and chucked it to Fluorite in order to lend her something to tip the balance of their duel.

Once the deed had been done Hydrazine turned back to see her opponent rising up once more, another newly summoned axe already in their hand, but she would not allow herself to be dissuaded by the gesture. Hydrazine rushed forwards in a beeline sprint, new flames already billowing in her mouth that were ready to lash out against the opposing purple titan.

Holly Blue saw the large weapon flying in her direction, not wishing to be crushed by it she took a few steps backwards, giving an opening for Fluorite to grab hold of it without fear of being struck by the destabiliser. Despite her size, she had relatively small arms and so to lift it she had to have all four of her arms clasped around it. Fluorite had a wearied smile of relief on her face, for she now had an actual way to defend against Holly Blue.

Though just as the two of them were about to meet in a duel Fluorite saw Bolt's body zoom right past beside her before she heard a resounding boom as he impacted the wall behind. She didn't dare take her eyes off Holly Blue to look, but the noises that followed afterwards told her everything she needed to know. Fluorite feared for him as she heard rubble break off of the wall, but what finally pushed her was the pained and terrified wail the child had let out before he was silenced by falling debris.

"BOLT!" She called out his name in the vain hope that he would call back, but there was no response.

This was the last line for Fluorite. She pivoted to place herself between Holly Blue and the pile of rocks where Bolt lay buried, the small amount of hope that he still lived and fiery anger born from motherly instincts motivating her to meet the officer in head on combat - their destabiliser and electro-whip be damned. Even the threat Holly Blue's weapons still posed to her did little to persuade Fluorite away from the path she had chosen.

As Holly Blue aimed for the axe with her whip Fluorite turned the flat side of the weapon's blade to deflect the whip and prevent it from coiling around the axe. Then in return she charged forwards, rapidly dropping the axe in a flurry of strikes that forced Holly Blue to be on the defensive as she had to manoeuvre around Fluorite's rapid and heavy offense.

She saw firsthand how powerful the illicit fusion's strikes were as each one that she narrowly dodged left deep gouges into the sturdy rock of the bridge that they stood on. Holly Blue knew that even a single direct hit would likely mean taking enough damage to poof her, and so not wishing to tempt fate she continued to simply avoid her foe's strike, electing to wait for Jasper and the amethyst fusion to finish off Hydrazine so they could join her and overwhelm Fluorite.

Now realising that she would get nowhere with this plan of attack Fluorite tried something else. Just as she was about to bring the axe down on the ground she flipped it to use the other end of the weapon as a battering ram, and as Holly Blue weaved to the away from the strike Fluorite whacked her sideways, the enormous shaft of the weapon flinging her to to the ground.

Fluorite made haste to capitalise on Holly Blue's disoriented state by charging over to her. She switched the axe back the right way around before bringing it down on her torso, the massive blade cleanly shearing away her entire right arm and part of her torso with a single cleave. The removed section of her body poofed away in a puff of blue dust, leaving nothing but the whip her right hand formerly held laying on the floor.

Fluorite dropped the heavy weapon that was weighing her down and hurried to turn back around and sift through the rubble to look for Bolt. All four of her arms rapidly worked to swat away large chunks of rock all the while calling frantically calling out his name, and as Fluorite finally sifted his head out of the debris she immediately went in to feel it. She felt an indescribable weight fall off her shoulders as her hand still felt warmth emanating from his body, then moments later she nearly felt jubilation as his eyelids began to flicker about and partially open.

However, her moment of joy was destined to be short lived as she felt immense pain overtake her whole body. Looking down she saw her body begin to be covered in crackling yellow seams and instantly she understood what had happened, she had been struck with the destabiliser. Fluorite craned her neck backwards to see exactly what occurred, and in her last conscious moments she saw Holly Blue standing right behind her in victory.

######

Even through his blurry vision Bolt felt nothing but horror as he saw Fluorite slowly falling apart in pieces before his very eyes, the fragments of her physical form poofing away as her gemstones fell clattering to the ground. Behind where she once stood was a battered yet triumphant looking Agate, though missing a significant amount of her physical form it seemed she had garnered the will to keep herself together. A tired smile had formed on her face as she marched unopposed over to where Fluorite's gemstones lay.

The Agate holstered the destabiliser then used her remaining hand to re-summon her whip, and at that moment Bolt instantly knew what she was going to do. He felt rage, compassion and desperation jump-start his broken body. After the robonoid incident he had made a promise to himself, a promise to do his damndest to protect the ones who unconditionally protected him when he was but a vulnerable infant. Now he would hold true to his silent oath.

He punched one arm through the rubble, sending broken rock to pelt the Agate in the face, the display diverting her attention away from Fluorite's gemstones and to him instead. Bolt used his now free hand to shove aside the rubble covering his chest, once that was done he jerked upwards before dragging his legs free from the debris through sheer brute force. Then in the very split second he was free he did a hunched run towards the Agate, arms splayed out wide with the intent on tackling her to the ground.

"GRAAAAAAGH! YOU GET AWAY FROM HER YOU PIECE OF SHALE!" Bolt had nothing intelligent to say, there was no rebuke to be had, no battle between ideologies, only unrelenting fury. In another place, in another time, it was a fact known throughout an entire galaxy that earning the directed ire of a Primarch was something proven to be tantamount to suicide; not only for individuals, but for entire civilisations.

Here it would not be any different.

"I will make you know your stars-damned place, human." Holly Blue threatened as she struck Bolt with her whip, as the weapon struck his thighs it coiled around them and as soon as it did she pulled on her whip as hard as she could to tighten it, tripping Bolt over and causing him to land chin first on the hard rock. Once he lay on the ground Holly Blue activated her whip, sending hundreds of volts of electricity down it and into him.

Though screeching in pain, Bolt did not give in, if anything it caused him to fight harder as redundancies in his modified body activated to dull the pain and pump even more combat chemicals into his veins. With a struggling breath Bolt managed to get up and kneel on both his knees, and in a show of sheer stubbornness he grabbed the still electrified whip and began a tug of war with her. It was one that he was slowly winning as Holly Blue was dragged closer and closer to him.

As the distance closed between the two Bolt could see the confused fear in her eyes while she could see the fiery determination in his. Whilst dragging her towards him Bolt opened his mouth wide and sucked in a few lungs full of the arid cavern air to dry his mouth. It was an action that would seem odd to any onlooker but made perfect sense for the unorthodox plan he had in mind - and now that Holly Blue was close enough he enacted it.

Bolt bit down on her whip, his dried maw making sure minimal electricity was transmitted into him by the act, and within a few seconds his incisors had made short work of her weapon, snapping it in twain. His arm let go of the section of whip he had held onto and shot out to grab Holly Blue's leg while his other arm worked to loosen the bonds around his legs. He stood up as fast as he could while also raising his arm to flip her over, but with Bolt still being a little shorter than her Holly Blue now dangled awkwardly from his hand as half her back touched the ground.

With a roar Bolt flung the arm gripping her leg in a wide arc upwards before suddenly slamming her back down as fast as he could. He turned his torso to the other side and swung his arm in another arc to slam her down again, then once more he turned his torso back to the side he originally faced and as Holly Blue did another orbit around his head she shouted threats at him. 'To let her go' otherwise she would 'ration his food and water supply' and then 'give him a hundred lashings for his disobedience'. Bolt simply ignored her and brushed the empty threats aside and continued his barrage.

He did this again, _and again,_ _**and again**_ , such was his fury that each time he slammed Holly Blue on the ground it formed a series of cracks on the solid bedrock upon impact. On the sixth time, instead of letting her hit the ground again, Bolt began to swing Holly Blue around overhead like a lasso. As he did this his eyes took the time to analyse the battlefield before honing onto Jasper, who was currently curled up in a comet charge aimed for Hydrazine's legs.

She was still locked in combat with the enormous amethyst fusion and Bolt knew Hydrazine couldn't take both them and Jasper on at the same time. So wishing to grant her some reprieve, his superhuman mind worked to calculate every variable possible about Jasper's movements and how to knock her off course. Moments later Bolt surged the top half of his body forwards and let go of Holly Blue, flinging her towards the exact area he predicted Jasper would be in.

In a panic Jasper tried to slow down as she saw someone flying towards her - but it did little good - a cloud of light blue dust erupted from the impact and only a faceted teardrop shaped gemstone that fell on the ground remained as evidence of Holly Blue's existence. In the heat of it all one of the cubic robonoids, who had so far only been spectating, rushed in to recover her before rapidly rising back up to the surface of the planet.

Jasper herself soon came tumbling unceremoniously out of the dust cloud, instantly she looked in the direction where Holly Blue had flown from. Wrath, hatred and vengeance were not adequate words to describe how Jasper felt the moment she saw Bolt standing there and shooting a disdained glare at her as she lay on the ground. Despite one of his arms laying somewhat limp on his side, the singeing around his legs, and the other numerous injuries they'd sustained Bolt still had an air of triumph around him that she could not stand.

Jasper was too close to him for an effective comet charge, and so she stood up and began to run towards Bolt. Much to her delight he simply assumed a defensive stance and soon the two warriors were joined in a rut of pure strength where she had the clear advantage. Though Bolt was not truly short by any definition - currently standing at three inches short of six foot - he was still far overshadowed by the behemoth that was Jasper who towered over him at a little over several feet tall.

Crossing his arms with the undamaged one on top, Bolt was forced a few steps back as Jasper went on the offensive and brought down punch after punch on him. He blocked each of her hits with a hiss as his good arm was forced back and impacted his damaged one, transferring a considerable percentage of the force from Jasper's blows into it.

Knowing her injured foe had no way to block her crash helmet effectively, Jasper suddenly changed her pattern of attack to headbutts in order to surprise him. But the sheer height difference between the two meant that Jasper's headbutt took longer to come crashing down, Bolt used these precious few split seconds to react. He stopped blocking and instead ducked beneath her, in fact he had ducked far lower than what was necessary to dodge the attack.

In combat a wide stance was preferable when going on the offensive, Jasper knew this, and so she took one up the moment she began clashing with Bolt, but unknown to Jasper, he had formulated a plan to use her own competence against her. As he crouched down he spread his arms wide and placed his neck right under Jasper's crotch while his arms just about managed to clasp half way around her pillar like legs.

Then, with as deep a bellow as his young voice could manage, he began straightening his back and with a herculean push Bolt managed to heft Jasper's titanic mass off of the ground and onto his shoulders. He could hear his spine crackle and feel his near broken arm scream in protest at the effort. But in the end, for the off colours' sakes, he soldiered through it.

With Jasper still bent forwards in a headbutt her centre of gravity was still off and Bolt used this to awkwardly turn around before he then leant back and began running backwards as fast he could while still remaining stable. Jasper attempted to dislodge herself by kicking at his chest and hammering into his back, and though each time she struck with enough force to buckle a steel plate the bent chunk of refined adamantium that made up Bolt's crude chestplate proved able to absorb her strikes.

Seconds later Bolt began leaning backwards even further, increasing his speed drastically at the cost of what little stability he had in the first place, then as Bolt stumbled over and landed on his backside he let go of Jasper and she struck the rock wall face first. The ram of her crash helmet was now buried in it, momentarily pinning her in place. But to Bolt's dismay it was only for just long enough to allow him time to stand back up and soon Jasper ripped her head out of the wall, sending pebbles flying all over the area before turning to face him.

Bolt was the only thing that stood between Jasper and Fluorite's gemstones, and he was intent on defending them with his life. Knowing she would not be away from the offensive for much longer he decided to be the first to land a strike in the renewed melee. Bolt sprinted forwards, sending a fist that would have mushed the chest cavity of an elephant squarely into Jasper's abdomen, but this only elicited the battle hardened veteran to hunch over for a moment before she grabbed ahold of his arm and threw him down range again, the sound of scraping metal filling the area as Bolt skid to a halt.

"Why do you continue to do it? You humans have such a comfortable life in the zoo, why give all that up to hang around a bunch of abominations?" Jasper questioned him sincerely as she picked up one of the gemstones that made up Fluorite in her left hand, inspecting it appraisingly while applying some pressure on it as a threat.

"You damned fracture I dare you, I FRAKKING DARE YOU!" Bolt chose to ignore her question as he got on his feet, his betcher's gland fired up again, causing him to form a rapidly growing wad of spit in his mouth that began to spill out onto his lips. An outsider may have thought little of this action or have thought that he had lost himself to anger, but it was not born from that, rather the action had come from yet another thought of combat cunning.

"If you say so." Jasper replied with contempt as she increased her grip's pressure, causing the gemstone in her hand to emit a screech as it was about to begin cracking.

That was the last straw for Bolt, he charged forwards at her with reckless abandon and in return Jasper stopped crushing the stone for a moment to take the time to send her fist careening into the side of his head, sending him falling sideways down onto the ground. In reply Bolt simply snapped his dislodged jaw back in place with a visceral crack, he immediately rose from the ground with a high jump aimed for the arm in which Jasper currently held the gemstone in.

He latched onto her forearm, both of his arms and legs wrapped tightly around the limb before he began ferally tearing into Jasper with his teeth, the acidic spit he had been building up in his mouth instantly being put to use as it soaked into the bite marks he had ripped into her body and began eating away at her physical form with terrifying speed. Jasper attempted to beat Bolt off of her with multiple hammering blows to his damaged arm and head, but if anything it only caused him to bite down harder and salivate even more.

She could only watch in muted horror as her arm was quickly lopped off by the caustic liquid all the way up to half her bicep, it fell to the ground before releasing it's grip from Fluorite's gemstone and poofing away in a mote of orange dust. Bolt fell down with the arm as it dissolved away, a sting of pain shooting up legs as he landed flatly on the skinned soles of his feet. He took the time to kick all six of the gemstones that made up Fluorite away from where he and Jasper fought in an attempt to keep them from being damaged in the chaotic melee.

Jasper clung onto her physical form to stop it from poofing with sheer willpower alone, she was running on fumes at this point, but so was Bolt. Both sides had fought as viciously and vigorously as eachother with no qualms on the horrendous wounds they would inflict on one another. While their nature meant that both would be able to easily regenerate, that all depended on whether they could escape eachother or not.

"I will send you back to your masters, freshly chastised and cowering inside your gemstone like the PATHETIC WHELP YOU ARE!" Bolt fired at Jasper as he wiped the spit away from his face.

After this final insult Jasper found it in herself to make for one last attempt to finally break Bolt, she let out an ursine snort before lashing out at him in a quick series of uncoordinated, but deadly punches and headbutts. But much to her frustration Bolt merely bided his time, dodging and weaving out of the way of all of her attacks.

Knowing his opponent was desperate for victory Bolt dodged her latest uppercut with a jump and landed in such a way that he was ready to leap again while also bending slightly forwards to jut his head out. Much to his delight Jasper's desperation had her fall into the bait as she attempted to bring her remaining fist crashing down onto his head. He could not have asked for a better opening, and so to instantly use it Bolt hopped again back to dodge her strike before then jumping onto her clenched fist to use it as a platform to jump onto her shoulders.

He shoved his right knee through her bushy orange tinted white hair and into the base of the back of her neck, then his left leg followed that up by wrapping around the whole front half of her neck. When Jasper stood back up to try and shake him off Bolt grabbed the underside of the ram on her crash helmet and he began pulling back on it as hard as his aching muscles could manage.

Jasper growled as she tried ripping his left leg off of her, but it was a short lived attempt, for only moments later a guttural crack could be heard echoing across the kindergarten. As it did, Bolt knew part of his job was finally done, the young demigod of war at last let himself slouch and slide off Jasper to gently collapse on the cold rocky ground.

Whilst Bolt lay tired on the floor he raised his head just high enough to admire his handiwork, he had bent Jasper's neck at a sickening nearly ninety degree angle backwards. Her beyond broken physical form now slouched before falling on both knees, she held that pose for a moment before her behemoth of a body went limp and fell sideways, finally hitting the ground with a thundering boom.

A veritable cloud of orange dust exploded from her dissipating form as she retreated back into her gemstone to heal, leaving only it laying on the ground. Bolt rose up, and despite the battle still going on between Hydrazine and the mega amethyst in the background he was quite sure she could take care of herself. Instead, he walked over to where Jasper's gemstone lay and picked it up in his hand to scrutinise it for a time.

"You aren't even worth it." Bolt muttered as he shook his head. "No, instead you will be my messenger. Your now flawed existence will serve as a warning to the Empire, you will let them know that we have grown teeth." He said to himself as he stared into the orange rock that held Jasper's life force within it.

He was not going to shatter her this day, but he was not above dealing Jasper the ultimate insult. Bolt worked his betcher's gland one last time and stuck out his tongue to lightly dip his index finger onto it before tapping the very top of Jasper's gemstone and letting the corrosive liquid do its work. The damage the small droplet of acid did physically was superficial at best, but that was not the purpose Bolt had in mind. No, this minor injury was instead meant to shatter her pride and reputation for all eternity.

"Farewell, foe." Bolt said somewhat solemnly as he walked over to the ledge of the rock bridge, his tightly clasped fist slowly uncoupling and let go of Jasper's gemstone, making it fall down deep into the kindergarten's many chasms. He saw one of the cube shaped robonoids go down and chase after her gemstone, probably in an attempt to recover her safely, just like the other one had done for Holly Blue.

Now there was only one left of the three machines that had originally come with their pursuers - the footage it streamed definitely having mortified whoever was viewing the battle. The chance that there was a viewer behind it was all the motivation Bolt needed to do an act of sheer spite. He walked over right in front of it before facing them and doing a broken version of the Empire's salute where his hands didn't fully connect to form a diamond shape. The gesture was small, but it spoke volumes of his opinions.

After several seconds he dropped it and went over to pick up Fluorite's gemstones, carefully cradling all six of them in his arms. Bolt jogged over back to the tunnel where they had come from and deposited all of them in there.

"Don't worry, you're all safe now." He whispered to each rock quietly as he set them down and patted them softly before running back out to make sure Hydrazine was still doing alright.

Only for him to be dissuaded after having barely taken a few steps by an enormous purple figure being sent flying his way. The damage he and Fluorite dealt to the terrain was great, but the gargantuan amount of force imparted onto the structure by the impact of the amethyst fusion had finally wrecked the bedrock that formed the bridge to its last legs, as was soon demonstrated by large pieces of it beginning to crumble off.

"HYDRAZINE! You need to run over here, NOW!" Bolt shouted out to her with worry woven into his words, hoping to get her attention before the gap grew too large in size to cross.

The fusion seemed to have heard, and as soon as she had turned around to see the falling bridge Hydrazine was struck with sudden panic before she immediately made a dead sprint over to Bolt. She had to time this correctly for if she was too late then the bridge would crumble from under her feet before she could even jump, while being too early meant that she might not have been able to build up enough speed to leap over the gap.

He looked on with baited breath, time almost felt as if it had slowed when Hydrazine finally made her leap, the rock under her feet crumbling downwards only moments after she did. To ease his mind Bolt took the time to calculate her trajectory, and much to his relief she should be able to land on a relatively stable part of the bridge with at least a meter or two to spare.

Yet, much to Bolt's sudden shock, just as Hydrazine was about to clear the jump the supposedly knocked out amethyst fusion moved to grab her leg just as the section of bridge they laid on began collapsing as well. Both of her faces erupted in equal parts surprise and fear as she felt herself immediately begin falling with the amethyst. Hydrazine managed to use her upper left hand to hold onto the ledge before trying to dislodge the amethysts, she tried kicking, punching, even breathing flame - but it was all in vain.

Bolt was petrified in place and he could only look on in sorrow as the rock around Hydrazine's large teal hand began to crack before finally also crumbling off, taking her with it. As he fell to his knees in despair Bolt could have sworn that he heard her call out for help, he could hear her screaming grow quieter and quieter as she fell down into the labyrinth of Homeworld's kindergartens. Potentially tens, or even hundreds of kilometres down…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> Whew, this chapter might just be the longest single one I'll write in a while. After this I might just move the standard chapter size I intend from 2k-5k words up to roughly around 4k-8k instead just to allow me more flexibility.


	7. Interlude: Stone of night

_'_ _Enforcer Noctilith will be here to see you shortly.'_ Lapis Lazuli mentally repeated those words as she mused over what the quartz escorting her had said before they left her alone in the stark white metal room - and for more than one reason. First of all was that this 'Noctilith' had certainly been taking their time, if she had to make an estimate then she guessed that she had been waiting here for nearly two hours at least.

Secondly, she had never even heard of a Noctilith before. Lapis briefly remembered about a time near the end of the rebellion, she had overheard rumours from a group of Peridots that had passed her by, though she heard little of their conversation she remembered how hushed and secretive they sounded. They had spoken of a project, supposedly with the goal of preventing future rebellions from ever occurring.

With that memory in mind Lapis wondered if the result of that project had been a new gem type, but at that thought her curiousity was replaced with unease. She had been mistaken as a rebel once before and the treatment she received upon arriving back in the Empire hadn't exactly been the most welcoming. The fact they had been referred to with the title of 'enforcer' did little to comfort her either.

She looked around the empty room for another time, and this time it started to feel a lot more like a prison cell. Though it lacked the destabilisation field around the door, it had all the other markings of a cell. Hard metal making up every surface, a plain undecorated interior and a security detail of quartzes making their patrols around the facility.

Lapis let out a resigned sigh as she realised how little chance of escape there was from here. She had little intent of being misidentified as a rebel and being turned into a prisoner again, and so she resolved to try and convince them that she was not. After seeing how the Empire had changed in the past few millennia she knew it was likely her only hope.

She started anxiously tapping her feet as a sudden jolt of nervousness began emanating from her mind, but it did little to help ease her. If anything the sensation began growing in intensity until it morphed into palpable fear, then from fear it evolved into absolute terror. Lapis' tapping soon grew more rapid and intense, then she started clenching her fist and closing her eyes as if someone was about to strike her. After waiting in custody for so long she had already started feeling anxious, but this was something else entirely, and she hadn't the faintest clue on where it had come from.

At last she heard the door at the front of the room hissed open, prompting Lapis to instantly halt her actions and stand to attention. But she could not halt her unnatural paranoia however, and it only appeared to increase in strength as the other gem that had just entered the room closed the distance between them. From their sheer presence alone it was not hard for her to understand that this was enforcer Noctilith.

Lapis tried to look over them as best as her suddenly ailing mind would allow. They wore limb enhancers like most era 2 gems - which she had quickly learnt was because they needed to compensate for the rationed resources involved in creating them affecting their final quality. But unlike them Noctilith did not look as if she really needed them. Even without them on she looked as if she could still match an era 1 quartz in height, though she did seem to have been built with a bit less bulk than one.

She found most of their physical form as mostly unremarkable. They possessed a drab dark grey coloured body, straight jet black hair tied in a near spherical bun and a simple uniform in the typical style most gems in service to the Empire wore - in their case the symbol on their uniform was that of a white diamond. Despite the fact that also they had a solid white visor that hid their eyes, Lapis could still feel Noctilith's withering gaze pierce through it and analysing every bit of her form as if to pick out any minute flaw they could find.

With the colour scheme of the location she found herself kept in Lapis was sure that she would have to meet with a gem of the white court, but that didn't mean she dreaded the prospect any less. Gems of the white court were few and far between but had a reputation for being unyielding, unbending and even uncaring at times. And this was even before the rebellion, she could only wonder in apprehension of how much more callous they would have grown after it.

What also caused Lapis concern was the massive dual tipped spear Noctilith carried, even from where she stood she could tell it was far longer than she was tall. Though what was strange about the weapon was how it did not match the colour scheme of the rest of the white court, or any of the mainly monotone palettes of the Empire. The blades on either end of it looked brass coloured while the shaft was mostly sea green except for two spots, likely the hand grips, which were also brass like.

Noctilith strode over to the middle of the room where Lapis was with silent authority in her step while maintaining her appraising stare. She stopped once a meter away from them and soon after the fingers of their limb enhancers floated off from the rest of the hand and touched down on the floor, prompting three squares of light to briefly emanate where they made contact. From these squares blocks of unshaped hardlight then rose up and solidified to form three structures - a plain table with two seats on either side.

The fingers flew up from the floor and back to Noctilith's limb enhancers before they moved again in a single circular motion, gesturing Lapis to take a seat. Once both sides sat down she felt the mounting pressure on her psyche suddenly cease. Though she noted that the moment her mind calmed the temperature of the room rapidly dropped and minute ice crystals began forming, despite the complete lack of moisture she had detected in either the air or on any of the surfaces.

To her surprise Lapis also began feeling mild discomfort in her gemstone as the water stored inside there began freezing too, the sharp ice crystals that formed now stabbing at her from within. She was at a loss on how to rationalise these events, but her focus was now directed elsewhere as she hoped to pass whatever invisible categories were going to be in the coming interview, for she had a strong feeling that her life likely depended on it.

Now that they had sat down Lapis could get a better look at the enforcer's gemstone and she now knew with certainty that it was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was a small pyramid shaped object placed in the middle of her neck some distance below her chin. The stone itself looked like a smooth black rock that vaguely reminded Lapis of a snowflake obsidian, yet unlike an obsidian it had an unusual metallic sheen and was quietly thrumming with unknown energy.

Three fingers from Noctilith's left limb enhancer flew off to the side and formed a floating triangle that held her spear aloft. Then four fingers from her right limb enhancer flew in front of her to form a frame that began to emit holoscreen, which the remaining finger on that limb enhancer began swiping away at. Lapis watched on as pages upon pages full of detailed information on other gems rapidly whizzed by until it finally stopped on one file - hers.

"Lapis Lazuli, Cabochon-7N4R, Cut-9HG. Member of terraforming squad Sol-3. Last known mission: Temporarily assigned to Earth colonisation effort and tasked with making the planet's conditions as efficient as possible for gem cultivation and habitation." Noctilith laid out her life as plainly as one could state the time before pausing and intently waiting for a response. Lapis had no idea how to respond aside from doing a curt nod in confirmation, which finally prompted her to continue after a tense silence.

"You were presumed lost after the Crystal Gems launched a surprise attack to eliminate squad Sol-3, later intelligence shows that likely did this because they knew of your importance to the planet's colonisation." She let a hint of venom infect her tone at the very mention of the rebels before becoming impassive again. "Assumed status: Destroyed, or captured by rebels." Noctilith announced her supposed death as if it was simply a daily production quota.

"However, it appears your current status is contradictory to what is in the records. An explanation of the true events from your perspective is required to correct this." She finished.

"That is mostly right," Lapis nodded again. "When I was sent to Earth it was only meant to have been for a short stay, just long enough for me to transport all the water off-world. But only a few days after my arrival, the area I was currently working in had a battle take place and I was caught right in the middle of it, I tried to escape but I was ambushed and poofed by one of the rebels." Lapis recounted. Normally there would have been more sorrow in her tone, but Noctilith's presence terrorised her into speaking with flat formality.

"But what is different is that I was not shattered in the battle or captured, at least not by the rebels in the beginning. What happened was that after the battle my gemstone was found by a homeworld soldier who placed me inside a mirror, they thought I was one of the Crystal Gems. They interrogated me for months, asking me about battle plans, base locations or names of rebels. But I didn't know anything and I had no way to tell them I wasn't a rebel." Lapis continued.

"Later, in the evacuation of Earth I was lost in the panic. The person carrying the mirror was making their way to the Earth galaxy warp, but they dropped it and someone behind them rushed over it and stepped on my gemstone, cracking me in the process. After that the last thing I could see was the flashing of the galaxy warp as it activated and ships flying away from the planet before a brief, but bright light covered everything." She said with the slightest hint of misery. However Noctilith continued to indifferently type on her holoscreen - either having not picked up on it or simply not caring for Lapis' plight.

"For who knows how long I sat there at the galaxy warp, but I was trapped in the mirror and unable to move or free myself. Eventually one of the Crystal Gems - I think it was the renegade Pearl - came there, picked up the mirror and hid me away inside her gemstone." She added.

Noctilith immediately stopped typing and locked her head to face Lapis, noticing a few small details in her story. "You said you were cracked and later stored inside a pearl's gemstone, correct? Yet your form shows no sign of damage and you have somehow escaped, were you set free and repaired in some way? If so by who?" She inquired, causing Lapis to erupt in wide eyed panic.

"Oh… uh. I, well- what happened was..." She silenced herself as she thought of the best way to explain the events without mentioning Steven. If she could sweat, then right now she would have been sweating bullets as she realised what she had just let slip. Though her freedom may depend on it, she didn't want to incriminate the only person who had even bothered helping her in millennia, especially not in front of someone like Noctilith.

Only a few moments of Lapis not speaking was enough for them to justify taking action against her, Noctilith brought all the fingers of her right limb enhancer back. She then directed her outstretched hand at her before tightly clenching it. The second the action was done Lapis felt an agonising pain strike her from the inside, she suddenly cried out in anguish and flinched so violently that she nearly hit her head on the table.

She barely held in her screams as she clutched her head and tightly shut her eyes in a fruitless attempt to shut out her most repressed memories as they were made to replay over and over again. It felt as if they had been forcibly ripped out from the deepest recesses of her mind and then shunted to the forefront where they were magnified to be even more vivid than when she had actually lived through them.

Even through the tumult unfolding in her mind it did not take Lapis long to realise that it was Noctilith's doing. She also quickly understood what this demonstration of power was for, It was to show her the futility of defiance. While it seemed that Noctilith did not touch the memories related to her final few days spent on Earth, Lapis now knew that either she would speak the truth, or the truth would be torn out of her.

Though her immense relief it seemed that while Noctilith made the demonstration quite potent, she only intended it to have been brief. It was not long before she retracted her hand away from Lapis and sent her right limb enhancer's fingers out to form the holoscreen again, but she made one final action to truly hone in the point.

" _Withholding or falsifying important information to authorities will not be tolerated and shall be met with severe punishment."_ Lapis had to resist jolting in her seat as she heard Noctilith's voice whisper to her despite them not having moved their mouth at all. If this new gem type was how the Empire intended to stop any future rebellions then she had to agree, from what little of them she had seen so far, that they were horrifyingly effective.

"...I'm not even sure how to explain some of what happened." Lapis said after having taken a few breaths to try and steady herself. "B- but i'll try." She hastily added in an attempt to appease Noctilith, who thankfully took no further action and instead silently began waiting for the rest of the explanation.

"Around a few weeks before I arrived back on Homeworld the renegade pearl finally released the mirror from her gemstone, there was another member of the Crystal Gems there with her too at the time, but I don't think they were a gem." Lapis stopped for a moment to ponder. "Now that I look back at it, I think that they might've been a human." She mentioned, sounding somewhat unsure, before moving on.

"The pearl started asking me to show the galaxy warp, but I refused to show her anything - I think she was doing it to teach the human about gems. But because of my refusal to show anything, and the visible damage I had taken, I made her think that the mirror had broken. So she gave me away to the human thinking I was just a harmless trinket." Lapis said with hidden disdain, but still being careful not to mention Steven's name.

"So that's when I took my chance. I used the limited amount of clips of speech I had while in the mirror to talk with and then make friends with the human, but that did nearly backfire because he thought he'd fixed the mirror, so he went back to the Crystal Gem's base to show them. After that they tried taking me back from him but I convinced him not to."

Noctilith held up a finger to stop Lapis from talking any further before temporarily closing the document she was currently writing and moving on to open a file that contained what appeared to be a compilation of gems, all of them highlighted as being wanted as traitors and rebels. "Did any of the other individuals you saw present in their base match these images?" She asked as she turned the holoscreen around to face Lapis.

"Oh, here's two of them. But there was also one other, I only saw them for a few seconds but I think they were an amethyst." She told Noctilith as she tapped on the images that were labelled with the rather unflattering monikers of 'renegade pearl' and 'false garnet'. Though Lapis may have developed some amount of caring for Steven, she had nearly no qualms in exposing the other Crystal Gems for having kept her as their prisoner for so long.

Noctilith turned the holoscreen back to herself before then filtering out the individuals from the database based on the information she had given to her. Moments later she had already finished sorting the files and she turned the screen back around for Lapis to see if they recognised the third rebel she saw among them.

"No, none of these look like her." Lapis replied after carefully scrutinising each one, keen to avoid another invasive mental scrying.

"Was Rose Quartz present at all?" Noctilith questioned, straight to the point as ever.

"I'm not sure, but I didn't see her with the rebels any of the times they confronted me." She answered, causing Noctilith to subtly hum in mild irritation as she nodded for Lapis to continue her end of the story.

"When the false garnet was about to take me, the human struck them and they ran away from their base while taking the mirror with them. They hid behind a rock and asked me what to do, so I showed them images of how to take my gemstone out from the mirror. Thankfully they understood what I meant and they removed me, which finally let me take my physical form again." Lapis sighed tiredly as if she was still fresh from being released.

"After a short fight with the rebels I escaped to the ocean, but I was still cracked so I couldn't fly away from Earth. So Instead I tried using all the planet's water to build a tower back up to Homeworld, I knew it wouldn't work, but after being trapped for so long I had to at least try something." She said. Her grief, though diluted by fear, emphasising the last few words of her sentence.

"...The Crystal Gems along with three humans came to confront me. I easily held the rest of them off, but the same human from before talked me into letting them up the tower to speak to me. He promised that he didn't want to fight me, but also wanted me to give the planet's water back, and in return for it he would heal me." Lapis spoke after taking a few breaths to calm herself

"So I allowed him to try, and to my surprise it actually worked. Since he kept his end of the promise I kept mine, after that I let go of my control over Earth's water and flew back to Homeworld." She had been reluctant to add that final part, but Lapis knew the consequences for her would be far greater if she didn't.

"What method did he use to heal you?" Noctilith asked the moment she finished her story.

"Oh. He… he put his spit on my gemstone." Lapis awkwardly replied to the stone faced enforcer.

Once she wrapped up her recollection of events Lapis absentmindedly began to pay attention to the rapidly growing document that was on Noctilith's holoscreen. Paragraphs upon paragraphs speedily materialised - despite her typing with only a single finger - along with accompanying notes being tacked onto the more important pieces of information. With the speed they were making them at Lapis could only read a few of said notes, but what she managed to see was disconcerting to say the least.

 _' **Theoretical:**_ _Rebels have possibly begun recruiting humans and informing them of gem technology.'_

 _' **Assessment:**_ _Likely an attempt to bolster their numbers or prepare a defence force intended to repel any force sent to Earth. Any mission to the planet should now be armed to deal with this.'_

 _' **Theoretical:**_ _Rose Quartz, by unknown means, has successfully spread her knowledge of gem repair to others.'_

 _' **Assessment:**_ _Rebels now potentially have multiple places to regroup and recover.'_

_' **On incident 2-S3-A:** The disappearance of the red eye sent to monitor Earth indicates that it may have been detected and destroyed by rebellion remnants. The rebels are now possibly alerted of the Empire's renewed attention of the planet and they may be organising defensive measures. These developments will prove detrimental to the success of the planned cluster monitoring mission, reinforcements for it will be required.'_

Lapis would be lying if she said that she didn't at least partially care about Steven for what he did, and so she felt especially worried for his safety after taking a glance at the final note.

 _' **Addendum:**_ _The capture and study of the human or other individuals demonstrating the ability of gem repair would be beneficial to the continued existence of the Empire. I suggest adding it as a secondary objective of cluster monitoring mission, or the creation of an independent mission with it as the main objective.'_ Noctilith finished typing. Afterwards she collapsed the frame of the holoscreen and brought her right limb enhancer's fingers back to the hand while her left limb enhancer's fingers towed her spear floating back to her grasp.

"Is there any more information on the rebels that you are able to provide?" Noctilith asked one last time.

"No, that's all I was able to find out." Lapis responded back truthfully. Yet, despite her honesty, as the words left her mouth she felt a small prickling sensation in her mind for a few seconds as Noctilith began a more gentle, but still quite invasive scrying of her thoughts.

"Your cooperation has been noted. However; you have informed me that during your time on Earth you worked with a member of the Crystal Gems, and while in this context it is not totally treasonous, you shall stay here until such time that a thorough investigation on you can be conducted." Noctilith said cooly to Lapis as she stood up from her seat.

"Wait, what?! But you know that i'm not a- a- reb-" Lapis found herself struggling to speak as that same sheer terror she felt when Noctilith first entered the room overtook her, she could only look on in despair as she helplessly sat in her chair, watching on while the door closed behind Noctilith. Leaving her to be once more alone inside the maddeningly plain room.


	8. Descent: Chapter 1

**Homeworld kindergartens**

“Hydrazine?” Bolt raised his head and looked around as he nervously called out the fusion’s name into the darkness in the forlorn hope that she or one of her components would hear his pleas and call back to him. He may have been grown with the purpose of being a walking superweapon, but at his base he was still a human child, and like any lone child he was becoming increasingly distressed as the amount of time he spent separated from those he saw as his caregivers grew.

“Rhodonite!” He started to cycle through the off colours’ names after considering that Hydrazine may have already split back up into her components. Once more he waited in anticipation for a response, instead only to have his hopes rapidly fade with each passing second where there was no reply.

“Padparadscha!” He shouted out before going silent so he could listen out for a response, this time he waited even longer before moving on to the next one as he knew she would need some time for her perception of things to catch up with the present. Again though, there was nothing, only the echo of his voice reflecting off the rock and the hushed howling of the frigid wind that was directed his way by the high walls of the canyon he was currently trudging through.

“Leftile, Rightile?” He said the twins’ names, this time with far less vigour as the idea of a quick reunion began to wear away. In hindsight he shouldn’t have even dreamed to find them all again so soon. Bolt remembered laying on his knees, there at the edge of the broken bridge, simply waiting to hear an impact noise just so he could at least get an estimate on how far they may have fallen before going out to look for them.

He had sat there for quite some time, yet he had heard absolutely nothing, signifying that they had fallen a very long way indeed. Long enough that when they did hit the ground it was either not loud enough to hear, or that they hadn’t hit the ground at all and had been falling for the entire time he had sat there, and perhaps still were. He desperately hoped for the first situation to be the true one, otherwise he may never be able to find them again. The wrenching in his gut came back as the thoughts he had suppressed during the battle resurfaced and soon mixed with the current unease he was currently feeling to form a vile concoction that began brewing in his mind. 

The Agate’s words came to the forefront again. He was guilted into realising how his existence led to them being pursued again, how because of that one or more Fluorite’s components were nearly shattered twice, and now at how it led to many of the off colours being lost. Looking back at it, if he had just run from the robinoids, then they would never have been detected and none of this would have had to happen. But all of it did happen, and there was no longer anything he could do about it since it was not as if he could go into the past and undo his actions, so now he had to live with their consequences.

He wanted to scream and shout out all his troubles to fill the grating silence surrounding him, but he instead held all of it within. Bolt felt that after the robonoid incident he too needed to live by the example set by the words which left his mouth on that fateful day, even if the off colours were not present there and then to see it. Otherwise what would have been the purpose of teaching them to be confident, brave and strong if he didn’t follow the same lessons as well? He could feel the weight of culpability dragging him down, but he remained steadfast and endured onwards, for their sakes. 

“Do not fret, I  _ will _ find them, all of them, and I _ will  _ set things right.” Bolt said sternly to the six gemstones he cradled in his arms as he steeled himself for the task ahead. When he looked straight forwards at the rest of the canyon he felt his hearts sink as he saw the walls and floor of the place seemed to meld into an endless grey horizon that stretched out for miles ahead with no visible exits aside from one at the very of end of it where the floor appeared to abruptly cut off far in the distance, thankfully suggesting that it was probably a stony ramp that led to the deeper parts of the planet where the others were likely to be. All of it made him understand just how long the road ahead was going to be, but he cared not, the only thing that mattered now was finding them again and making sure they were all in one piece.

“At least I’m not wholly alone.” He muttered to himself while continuing to look down at the Fluorite’s components as they quietly jingled in his arms with each step he took. The fact she was, in a way, still with him was enough to soothe his psyche, even if only temporarily.

After looking at the same bare surroundings again Bolt realised just how long he had been travelling for, and though not physically tired, he needed a respite from his errant thoughts. He spied a modestly sized exit hole not too far above the ground, then upon deeming it suitable he walked over there and as soon as he arrived he sat down inside of it before setting down Fluorite’s components to do a cursory check on them. It had been the third time he had done this by now, but he wanted to make utterly sure they were undamaged in order to set aside at least some of his concerns.

  
As he picked through them he thought about how he could have taken a far quicker route down the kindergartens by using the tightly packed exit holes littering the place as a makeshift system of unevenly spaced ladders to descend into the rough area where Hydrazine may have fallen. But he knew that option ran the risk of dropping the gemstones in his custody, and stars knows if that amethyst fusion was still rampaging down there. It was impossible to tell how long it would take for all of them to regenerate so they could make the journey down together, and he could not bring himself to simply sit idle whilst the others were in potential danger.

Bolt found it intriguing how half of what made up Fluorite were the same simple green faceted triangles, peridots if he had to guess. Two of them were nearly identical and seemed to be of similar quality to eachother while the third seemed to be some amount more dimly coloured than the rest, likely small hints at the conditions they were grown under. 

While he had little idea about the identity of the one normally located on her abdomen, he could see that it was a yellow hued object about the shape of a rhombus diamond. However that was likely only a passing resemblance and not telling of their true identity as he had been told there have only been four of their kind to ever exist, and three as of a few millennia ago. He wished that number would fall lower though, a lot lower.

He recognised the next one far more easily, it was a pearl, and its near perfectly spherical shape combined with the uniform iridescent glow that highlighted the whole object was testament to the meticulous care which was likely involved in her manufacturing. He assumed that they were probably crafted originally to be a gift that was destined to become the prized possession of some especially high ranking noble in the diamonds’ courts.

Finally came the stone which, even after the third time seeing it, was still by far the most surprising for him to see present amongst the others. From above it looked to be circular in shape, it had a triangle in the middle from which three facets radiated out of, and despite the dark cavern atmosphere it managed to shine a brilliant blue. There was little doubt then that this was a member of the aristocratic class of gems, and an incredibly well formed one at that.

It was a sapphire, the rare seers of the blue court whose enigmatic powers allowed them to peer into the flow of time and see the future. Bolt briefly wondered about the story they must have to tell, to be able to hear how someone like them could have fallen so far from grace. And though he wouldn’t press them to tell it if they didn’t want to, whether they were laid low through plots and schemes or some other factor, he had a feeling that it would be interesting to listen to either way. 

_ ‘However, that can wait for later.’  _ The thought passed through his mind as he looked forwards and set his feet and hands down on the floor to push himself up, the now mostly healed skinned soles and his palms scraping on the ground as he did. In contrast to the well restored, though calloused flesh of those parts, were his long list of other wounds, his thighs for one had long twisting scars from where Holly Blue’s electric whip wrapped around him. Then came one of his hands, which now had a series of dents created by bite marks ringing the middle, that combined along with the permanent hole in his teeth as a result of a broken incisor made up a set of visible mementos - given to him free of charge by courtesy of Jasper.

Numerous as his injuries were, they did little to stop him from trying to find the others. With that in mind he picked up the gems back into his arms before walking out of the exit hole to continue the journey, now satisfied that unlike him none of them had sustained any harm. As he walked out of it he began to do a solid jog - just fast enough to cover more distance, but not too fast as to risk dropping his precious cargo.

Suddenly he was forced to halt as two of the gemstones, those of the pearl and the sapphire, began to float upwards one after the other out of the pile. Bolt’s attention was immediately stolen away by the event as he quickly understood what was about to happen and he backed off a few steps from the two to give them some space to reform. Unshaped light started to emanate from each of them before it hit some invisible margins and coalesced into the shapes of two people.

The pink light from the spherical gemstone then solidified into a lithe and tall form that landed hunched over on the ground. The main part of her appearance modifiers was a pinkish-purple coloured leotard that was slightly darker than the shade of the same colour that painted what could be classed as her skin. Then came the secondary part of her attire, which was a short translucent dress surrounding her waist that was coupled with a pair of low heeled shoes, each of which were nearly as iridescent as her gemstone. Last of all was her light pink hair that was set in a neat braid which dangled from side to side over her shoulder while she looked around to orient herself.

The smaller form of the sapphire regenerated next, landing opposite from the area where the pearl was searching. They had on a courtly dress which was a mix of white and differing shades of blue, with the lighter colours making up the different sections of the top and a gradually darkening cascade of shades making up each frilly layer of the full length skirt. Though her light blue hair may have covered much of the top half of her face, Bolt could see the bottom part of her gemstone poking out through the long fringe in place of where a singular large eye should have been. 

Expectedly, both of them forgoed generating any symbol related to the diamonds or the Empire anywhere on their forms, but what Bolt most definitely did not expect was that they independently decided to paste one of the symbols on his gestation pod somewhere on their new physical forms, more specifically the symbol of the sharp mouthed creature with lightning streaking out of it. Half unbelieving it he did a double take by looking down at his chest to see the side of the pod which had the symbol on it and then looked back up at the two. Faded as the one painted on his makeshift armour plating was, he could still confirm with high certainty that they matched.

The pearl generated it directly on her body, just below her neck but also just above where the gemstone located on what would have been the middle of her sternum had she been a human, while the sapphire had done it on the side of her dress’ left puffy shoulder pad. Bolt had little idea of why they did so, though perhaps it was a sign of solidarity? Maybe it was simply an act of defiance to their previous allegiances by taking up a different banner? Either way, he recognised how out of place the solid black symbol looked when compared to their otherwise bright colour palettes, but that only served to highlight its presence even further.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Sapphire anxiously said as she stood back up, their poofing at the hand of Holly Blue Agate still not far removed from their recent memory. It seemed that their gemstone’s positioning may have had an effect on their vision, as she appeared to begin wandering with her hands held out to feel her way around.

“Sapphire!” Iridescent Pearl instantly called out to them before Bolt was able to even open his mouth to respond. In turn, the directionless blue gem rapidly twisted their body to face the area from where the voice had come from. Pearl ran towards Sapphire, smiling in joy after seeing that they were alive and the moment she neared she kneeled down to face level and swept Sapphire's fringe aside with her right hand to gently caress her gemstone, making sure that it was free of any cracks.

“Pearl, please stop worrying about it, I’m fine.” She calmly replied with a quiet giggle shortly following her statement. Sapphire’s own gloved hands moved to smoothly take their hand off of her face and into her own grasp instead, making Pearl look awkwardly upwards away from Sapphire as she became ever so slightly flustered at the act. But the minute vibrations coming from the movement could be felt by Sapphire, eliciting her to giggle for a second time at Pearl’s expense.

“Well, what are we waiting for!” Pearl quickly shouted out in an attempt to switch the topic, wanting to cut the nigh endless cycle of teasing that she knew would come next if she didn’t. Her right hand slid out of Sapphire’s grasp and joined with her left hand to slide under the aristocrat’s shoulders to lift her up, causing the far shorter gem to momentarily exclaim in surprise as she was swiftly hoisted off the floor in preparation to fuse.

“Why are you in such a rush, Iri?” Sapphire said coyly with a knowing smile as she peered into the near future while making Pearl shrink back at the mere mention of her nickname in the present.

“Hello? Am I interrupting anything?” Bolt said innocently with a wave as he walked up to the pair, deciding to try to add himself to the conversation at the worst time, his young mind not being privy to the context of what was proceeding in front of him. Pearl’s head snapped to his direction, and when she caught sight of him she felt both relieved and increasingly flustered by his presence - relieved that he was alive and had saved the other four components of Fluorite, but flustered at the fact that there had been an audience to Sapphire’s antics the whole time.

"OH! NO, it's, uh, it's nothing. We're just… catching up!" Pearl said hastily with a nervous dismissive laugh, struggling to formulate a reply. “Sapphy, why do you do this to me?” She whispered to the blue gem when she turned away from Bolt to face her again. Their cheeky smile failed to falter, if anything it only grew wider as they struggled to hold onto a raucous laugh of her own in a merciful act of sparing Pearl any further embarrassment.

“Fine, fine. Just put me down and-” She stopped speaking for a moment to let out a small snicker. “We can get this over with.” She finished. Pearl eyed Sapphire skeptically for a moment, wondering if she would use this opportunity to carry on with her charades, but she eventually found some faith within herself to set them down on the ground.

Thankfully it seemed that faith was not unfounded as Sapphire soon offered her hands up to her far taller partner, who now let out a grateful sigh. Pearl did a small pirouette before arching down to accept the gesture and initiate their fusion dance at last. After that Pearl stood back up, her slender arms allowing her to still hold onto Sapphire’s own. The pair then made a few graceful steps back and forth, speeding up with each set completed until on the fifth set Sapphire broke one hand off and spun away, turning around opposite to Pearl. As she stopped her spare hand poised dramatically on her forehead with the palm flecked upwards.

Pearl was tempted to playfully roll her eyes at the noble’s showy display, but she elected to continue the dance without complaint by pulling Sapphire back in, grabbing hold of her other hand as they returned followed by the pair doing another five sets of steps back and forth. Pearl then let go of one hand and did her own spin around, though on her go she landed on the other side with her back arched downwards and one arm splayed outwards with an elegant flair. 

Sapphire smirked at the performance before pulling her back in, though when it came time to reign her back she pulled Pearl much closer, to the point that they were curved so far down that their faces were nearly touching. At this Pearl summoned the confidence to lean in further to finish the dance in style by planting a kiss on Sapphire... only to stumble as she lost her balance and received a mouthful of hair when she unceremoniously face-planted into her long fringe, toppling the previously composed duo over. 

As Pearl’s face lit up in humiliation any and all pretence of Sapphire upholding the courtly manners she once adhered to disappeared when she erupted in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. But only seconds later Pearl joined in too, seeing how humorous the situation was as well, slowly building up from a hushed chuckles until she was guffawing the same volume as Sapphire.

Now that harmony between their mental states had been achieved, albeit in a rather unusual way, their forms began to glow, heralding the breakdown back into two amorphous blobs of light that then blended together into a singular purely light purple gemoid shaped projection before solidifying into a being composed of a more varied palette of the same colour. 

The gemstones embedded on the fusion too had changed, now taking up a purple dominated iridescence as opposed to Sapphire’s deep blue and Pearl’s mainly pink iridescence. The resulting being was still lying on the floor, finishing up her last few snickers as she stood up and started to stretch themselves in an attempt to throw off the exhaustion of being trapped within her stones for so long.

Her head tilted upwards as her upper pair of hands clasped eachother around the back of her neck and her smaller lower pair wrapped cupped the middle of her back. A few audible pops and cracks could be heard as she all of a sudden bent her whole upper torso backwards into her locked hands. Now that was done the fusion then rectified her posture and turned her attention to Bolt, who had been standing there in content silence for quite some time now, likely out of a wish to be polite and wait his turn to speak whilst her two components were busy getting back together.

Now face to face with them Bolt could see what the new, at least new to him, fusion looked like. They had powdery purple hair, which looked to have changed into a style like that of Fluorite’s, with the fringe now higher up so that the gem on her forehead was fully uncovered. Meanwhile the rest of their head was overall more similar to Pearl’s, with gently rounded features contrasted by the prominent sharp nose. Now that he thought of it, their nose half reminded him of the creature present on the symbol he was named after.

Their body’s complexion also inherited the paleness of a pearl, with a muted purple making it up. On the other hand their arms looked to have had little mixing of features aside from a change in colouration, for they stayed independent. With Sapphire’s arms - distinguished by the pair of long white gloves going halfway up the forearm - being found in the usual spot, and Pearl’s - located on the middle of the abdomen at the sides - making up the lower pair. Each of them were appropriately enlarged to be in proportion with her increased size.   
  
In terms of what they decided to generate for their appearance modifiers, the top part of the outfit resembled Pearl’s leotard combined with shoulder padding coming from the attire of Sapphire while what once was Sapphire’s skirt became the bottom half of the dress, though this time the various blues had switched to the corresponding shades of mildly iridescent purples and it only reached down to her knees as opposed to all the way to the ground.

As he looked up to their shoulders pads it seemed that they had also decided on keeping only one of the symbols made by their base parts, that being Pearl’s one placed at the same location in between the bottom of her neck and middle of her sternum. Bolt found this decision of theirs to be quite sound, as it felt a tad redundant to plaster the same symbol elsewhere when it was already placed on a conspicuous position.

“I am Purple Ammolite, or simply Ammolite for short.” She introduced herself as she squatted down to eye level with the boy. Being a fusion of two meant she had some extra size her constituent parts didn’t, and though not enough to be classed as truly gigantic, standing at roughly eleven feet tall meant that she still quite handily towered over him when she stood up at full height.

“What should I call y-” Bolt cut himself off as he realised that the fusion had answered his question before it had even left his mouth. Ammolite smiled as she responded to the confused yet amused emotion he now expressed by tapping on the gem embedded on her forehead, causing his face to instantly shift into toughened contemplation. Though she knew what he would ask next, she decided in this case it would be more appropriate to let him finish his sentence.

“Are you able to use your future vision to find where the others have gone?” He asked her, the restrained hope welling up in his eyes tugging at her to answer with haste. Ammolite stood in silence for a time as she closed her eyes and let her precognition do its work, the flow of fate now as clear to her as the long forgotten daylight of the planet’s surface. 

Her vision travelled through to the end of a hundred streams every second, and by the time she opened her eyes again thousands of conclusions were already catalogued - whether they were good or bad and the probability of them occurring being made known to her. Blessedly, the positive outcomes were far more numerous and likely to come to pass than the negative ones.

“They are… far, but not unreachable. If you follow my lead we can go to where they will be and wait for them there.” Ammolite assured him by mentioning the most probable future she had seen. Though she may have seen a number of unfavourable outcomes, she decided on withholding them so as to not dampen the child’s already low spirits.

“But, can you be sure the others will be safe from the robonoids? Or if we can even arrive there on time before they move further on?” He asked her, still holding onto his worries despite receiving a prediction of the future.

In response Ammolite said nothing and instead gave him a small kiss on the forehead, a number of sparkling particles being emitted by the act. Bolt’s eyes opened wide and his pupils slightly dilated as he felt his point of view being torn from his body then flung through the kindergartens at all speed, rocky walls and pillars appeared as quickly as they disappeared each time he flew, ran down a ramp or made a turn as he was sent a miles down into the planet’s crust within a fraction of a second. Despite having travelled that far, he spotted not a single robonoid swarm in the way, which did some work to put his mind at ease.

Eventually the vision reached its destination. It revealed to him Hydrazine, still fused together and standing triumphant over the giant amethyst fusion with a boulder poised over her heads, ready to drop it onto the enemy and end their prolonged duel. The battlefield the duo of giants had fought in was littered with craters, rubble and axe marks, yet it seemed that all of Hydrazine’s gemstones were still in mint condition. The vision ended there, leaving him to rapidly blink his eyes and shake his head while processing what he had just seen.

“So, how do you feel now?” Ammolite asked him.

“Tired.” Bolt replied with a yawn. “Though, thank you for showing me that.” He added, sounding grateful for being given hard to deny evidence that the others were safe.

“Do you want to go into your rest cycle then?” She offered him.

“Yes please.” He readily accepted with a lazy nod. The catalapsean node may have been a powerful modification to stave off sleep for days, even weeks at a time, but it too had its limits. Though if Bolt was being honest he could probably have gone on for a good time longer with minimal consequence to his health, but this was a chance to spend some time with someone who he technically had never seen before, and Ammolite did seem to possess quite a likeable disposition. Even then, the previous cluster of events had left him feeling worn down and now looked to be a good opportunity to recuperate.

“Allow me to take those off of you first.” She said, looking at the gemstones jumbling around in his arms. He complied without a word, knowing just how important they were to Ammolite, who then took the four rocks from him and cradled them in her lower pair of arms. With the transaction done she placed her upper pair of hands on her lower back, palms facing upwards to act as steps for Bolt. He then walked behind her, clambered upwards then sat on her shoulders, his legs fitting neatly around her neck

Bolt soon laid his face with his right cheek down on Ammolite’s soft hair with the intent of using it like a pillow, the small amount of baby fat left on him made to gently smush up into his eyelid. All the while his arms went forwards to hug her forehead as to cling onto her when she stood up from her half-squat, turned around to face the right direction and began to walk. Her size combined with her willowy form meant that her strides were long, making it so she was making good distance with each step.

“Ammolite?” He said, getting her attention. “If you have future vision, do any other fusions with a Sapphire included within them receive the ability as well?” He queried.

“Perhaps, though I believe it may only be true if they are made of two gems. I find that any more, and it is diluted beyond any usefulness. Even for me it’s already weakened, I can only see relatively short-term futures while Sapphire on her own can see things that stretch for potentially millennia in the future with exceeding accuracy.” Ammolite answered as concisely as she could.

“...I know that it is unlikely that the others will be attacked by robonoids and that they have defeated the amethysts. But what of different threats, like more Homeworld gems looking for them, or something less predictable like falling debris? Has your future vision shown you anything related to that?” He asked her another question after only a few seconds of silence, his stress about the rest of the off colours’ wellbeing still keeping him awake.

“Bolt, please try to not think about it so much. Though yes, in a small number of my visions I did see those events happen, but just because I have seen it does not mean it actually will occur.” Ammolite said in an attempt to comfort him. “If it will help ease you into your rest cycle, then would you like to hear another story?” She then suggested, knowing just how much he enjoyed those.

“Of course!” He replied enthusiastically, making Ammolite chuckle as she realised the ironic situation that she had just caused. Now he was unlikely to fall asleep easily, not because of worry, but because of excitement.

“How did Sapphire and Pearl meet, and how was it like when they first fused to become you?” He asked her, jumping at the opportunity to sate his curiousity. “You do not have to tell me if it is a sore talking point though.” He added upon seeing the prolonged silence coming from her.

“No, it’s alright, what happened is all in the past now.” She told him, a hint of dejection present in her tone. However Ammolite quickly moved through it, her components’ falls from grace were well healed wounds and she had no intention of letting them open up again. She used her pearl half’s abilities to create a group of three dimensional holographic projections that continually moved in front of her as she walked. There, it then began to replay her memories to bring accompanying imagery and sound to her tale. Or in the case of Sapphire’s memories, only the sound.

“It all began in the dusk of Era 1 and the war on Earth had been raging on for nearly a millennium. In the chaos of it all a lone Pearl sat on a ship that was on its way back to the Empire, for with the death of Pink Diamond the emergency evacuation of the planet had been ordered with all urgency by the other Diamonds. Her original owner, a Pyrope, had been slain in the line of duty about an Earth cycle earlier and without them to vouch for her, her fate was uncertain.”

“Under all of these grand events, a Sapphire emerged into the universe for the first time within the prime kindergarten of one of Blue Diamond’s colonies. Because of how rare and valuable her kind were, the event was met with some fanfare from the colonies’ inhabitants. Her gem shone for the first for all to see when the daytime light of the system's star struck it as she walked out, but at that moment the adulation of the crowd stopped, for there was a problem - she herself could not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> Credits go out to AJ Universe on YT since their theory video was the basis for the inclusion of a blind Sapphire, a Pearl and the three Peridots as the parts of Fluorite in this fic.


	9. Descent: Chapter 2

**Carinus 4, Prime Kindergarten**

_‘Dark. Why is it so dark?’_ Came the first thought she has ever had in her life. The total absence of light was startling to say the least, but the sound of all encompassing roaring formed by the thousands of voices coming from beyond was far more terrifying. It was so terrifying in fact, that she was almost convinced not to crawl out from the… ‘exit hole’, as her pre-programmed knowledge seemed to tell her the place she was currently in was called.

Ultimately however, it was that same programming which in the end coaxed her forwards into the crowd gathered in front of her. Her hands slowly swept the area in an attempt to feel her way around so she could orient herself and find which way was actually the front. After all, it would be embarrassing if the first thing an aristocrat such as herself ended up doing was walking face first into a slab of rock.

_‘That is where the walls are then.’_ She noted, now knowing where the sides were. The last thing left to do was separate the front from the back. Thankfully for her, the exit hole was still freshly exploded, causing a temperature difference within as air rushed in to cool the area. With that in mind she stuck her arms onto the rock in one direction before facing the other way and doing the same, then upon judging which way was colder she took her first few tentative steps into the world.

However, at the same moment she felt the dawn light shining down on her form for the first time, the cheers from the crowd that had come to watch her emergence began to slowly dissipate into an uneasy silence, only for it to build up into a malignant breeze of wispy gossiping moments later. At that, she suddenly became incredibly self-conscious, the same unease she felt when she emerged seeping into her as she questioned what had brought about such a response.

“What happened to her face!” An aghast sounding person called out.

“Is that her eye?” This person’s tone was more grim, as they knew full well the fate for gems such as her.

“Maybe that is why she took so long to walk out.” Came the dismissive, almost rude words of another gem who decided to give their thoughts on the situation.

Then the realisation hit her like a fist. She could feel light bearing down on her form, but she could not see anything aside from an endless sea of black. Prompted by the comments made by the audience she lifted her hair to feel her face, yet instead of a soft eyelid, her fingers instead made contact with the smooth hardened surface of her gemstone which had seemingly taken its place.

“Alright alright! Move on back to your posts, we’ll handle this.” A gruff voice shouted out to the crowd to suppress them. The massive thumps of that group's heavy footfalls gradually grew louder as their sources approached where she stood, and as they did she felt her self-preservation instincts kick in, urging her to run away. However fear anchored her to ground, fear of both those that were coming to take her and fear of the increased punishment she would face should she try to avoid justice.

“You’re coming with us.” Came the same gravelly voice again as she was mildly whiplashed when two large hands clamped down on her arms, the sheer force of the brutes’ actions nearly shoving her over. These were quartzes, amethysts specifically if she had to guess considering she was of the blue court. Soon after she felt herself almost be dragged along the ground as the far larger amethysts moved along with all speed, the relatively small legs underneath her dress struggling to keep pace.

Stars knows where they would take her, but she knew deep down it was nowhere good.

#####

“Wait. If her deformity left her to be technically classed as an off colour, then how come Sapphire was not...” Bolt stopped himself and paused to think of a more polite way to word his question.

“Shattered on the spot?” Ammolite plainly finished his sentence without showing the turmoil underneath her visage of muted anger. “Mere convenience.” She spat, the words feeling like poison as they left her mouth. Though she could not physically see it, she knew the child perched on her shoulders was - if a bit apprehensive to ask outright - still curious to hear more. As a result she obliged, if only to warn him the Empire was never to be trusted by those in their position.

“The resource shortages the Empire was experiencing because of the failure of the Earth colonisation effort meant that a gem as valuable as a sapphire simply could not be thrown away. Especially in Sapphire’s case where despite having a major flaw, her prophetic abilities were proven to still be intact. That was probably the one of the only things that saved her from being shattered and recycled.” She subtly vented her frustrations to him. To know the only reason she was alive was because she was seen as little else than a resource was much to her distaste.

When she was telling him this, Ammolite almost moved to stop herself from saying any further out of instinct, but continued speaking anyway. This was no longer the complex world of court politics Sapphire had to endure, where the slightest amount of information you overshared with another could be used against you in some convoluted way later. This was the curiousity of someone who’s only motivation was to know more - to learn and nothing beyond that.

She found this aspect of Bolt’s character refreshing, hee was someone who she could confide in and not worry about him whispering her deepest secrets to others who may use it for their own ends. His innocent curiousity was also endearing in a way, as she didn’t even need to see him or use her precognition to know that he was already putting on _that_ face. It was one where his expression was near neutral aside from partially puckered lips and wide attentive eyes that had the uncanny ability to wordlessly tug at the person currently telling a story for more details whenever he directly looked at them.

“Where did the amethysts take Sapphire after that?” He finally mustered the courage to ask Ammolite to continue onto what was likely some of her more repressed memories.

“To Blue Diamond.”

#####

**Carinus 4-1, Diamond base**

The warp pad in the base sung its short tune as it activated with a concentrated flash of pale blue light, depositing Sapphire and her jailers within a structure located on the planet’s moon. Barely being given a breather, she was forced to be on the move again when the amethysts jerked her forwards as they made their way through the base. 

Two of them remained by her side with their hands solidly gripping her arms while she could hear a set of footsteps both behind and in front of her, signifying there were four of them around her in total. Though the brutish soldiers mistreated her to no end, she made no protests against them in the forlorn hope of a more lenient sentence being given to her for cooperating. Even then, there was little that a noble who was scarcely built for war could do against four dedicated soldiers.

The system containing Carinus 4 may have only been recently colonised barely over four centuries ago, but the diamond base was already extensive in its size, which was owed to the thousands of years of expertise gathered by its overseer. Murals utilising soft colours and curved lines along with elegantly designed statues placed on the edges of every hall emanated culture and power in equal with their presence. Not that Sapphire could see any of it however.

She underwent further bouts of whiplash as the amethysts turned each corner into more long hallways when they navigated the complex. Here, the only things she could hear were the rhythmic stomps of the soldiers’ feet or the occasional refined steps of another aristocrat high ranking enough to be allowed access to the area. Though much to her chagrin, those types of steps would often also be accompanied with a sneer directed towards her as they passed by.

It was only a matter of time before she was made to ascend up a set of stairs to be judged and meet her fate inside the main chamber of the diamond base, which was located on a tower extending far above the main building. As they arrived into the throne room of the base Sapphire felt herself being chucked down onto hard ground, the sounds of her struggling to stand back upright being ignored by those around her.

_‘What have I done to deserve this?’_ She thought to herself, letting out a resigned sigh as she dusted herself and got back on her feet. This may be the end of her very short life, and if that was the case, then she would at least die with some scrap of dignity.

“My diamond!” She heard the amethysts shout out in unison.

“I have already received the reports, you may leave now. Except _you._ ” Ordered a smooth and melodic, yet authoritative voice that caused Sapphire’s programming to force her to feel an overwhelming level of ingrained fear and respect once it recognised who was present in front of her.

“Yes my diamond!” Came an almost robotic reply from them that preluded the group marching out of the room. When the door hissed open then slammed behind her, she knew that she was now alone in a room with no one else but a diamond and likely their pearl, and as a flawed gem, this was perhaps the singular most utterly petrifying company she could ever ask for.

“Sapphire, Facet-1H3M, Cut-2TF.” Blue Diamond summoned her attention. “I want you to attempt to peer into the future. Once you do, tell me what you see.” Though her tone was an eerie, nearly reassuring calm, Sapphire knew that this was far from the truth. Her life hung in the balance here, and it was up to the events that would occur in the next few minutes for that to be tipped in her favour. 

Little did she know however, the odds were heavily stacked against her. Blue Diamond’s confidence in the capabilities of her kind had been shaken by previous events, especially by the grand failure of _that_ sapphire to predict the course of an event vital in ending the rebellion. _That_ same sapphire who then dared to turn traitorous and run away into Earth’s wilds with an errant ruby before joining the Crystal Gems. Several hundreds years may have fallen to the past since then, but for a being as ancient and immortal as a diamond, that meant it may as well have occurred yesterday. As such, she was barely in the mood for failure.

“O- of course. My diamond.” She stuttered out and hastily tacked on the honorary title as she did a shaky version of the salute, her anxiety still ever present within. Sapphire took a deep breath to dissipate the ice that was forming around where she stood as a result of her fear and to steady herself before she went silent for a time. Her normally blackened vision now emerged into a landscape formed of naught else except from an unsettling dark blue background and plains, with an enormous slow flowing river of nondescript smooth sky blue liquid snaking through the ground.

She followed the stream down to see where it would lead her. After having done so for some time she eventually saw the stream split into two, then looking upwards she saw it split again into four, then eight. Over and over did it split, some sections appearing as if they were large rapids leading into lakes and waterfalls while others were the size of mere rivulets that were barely able to fill the creeks and puddles they led to.

Choosing at random she picked one of the medium sized streams and followed it until she arrived at a sheltered pond. When she peered into the liquid that pooled there, her mind was flooded near the point of sensory overload with smells, sounds and even sights too. Initially shocked, she quickly got over it and began to sort the excess information into something more perceivable so she may be able to gather a presentable vision and depart from here.

“What did you see?” The cold, hardened inquisitiveness of Blue Diamond snapped Sapphire out of the near trance like state she had entered in a desperate attempt to find a vision that was good enough to warrant preserving her life.

“I foresee that in five months from now one of the specimens in-” She went quiet as she tried to find the correct term to describe the location her vision took place in. “-the human zoo giving life to five humans all at once. This will be something never before documented and it will be studied, but ultimately it is of minimal consequence to the Empire as a whole.” She said, mentioning an event that was far too specific to be falsified and near enough in the future that she would not have to languish in captivity for centuries.

_‘If I am to be recycled, then I may as well not delay the inevitable.’_ Sapphire thought as she bemoaned her fate.

“...Very well.” Blue Diamond said with a slow, almost imperceptible nod. “For the time being you are to remain here under my sight until the time your vision comes to pass **exactly** as described.” She finished with veiled harshness as she waved her giant hand at the console in front of her, the wind formed by the action causing Sapphire’s dress to sway in its wake. 

A square section of the left wall in the room glowed a blinding blue before it jutted out with unshaped light that soon solidified into an opened prison cell that was the size needed to imprison most regular gems. The insides were barebones, without even a single object that Sapphire could have used to at least used for sitting being contained within.

“Pearl, escort her into the cell.” She ordered the meek gem that had so far stood silently at the foot of her throne. “Do not resist them.” She then commanded Sapphire, who’s programming forcibly caused her to obey without reservation despite her trying to fight off these instincts. She may not have had eyes to see with, but the small gem could feel the unshakeable icy glare of the titanic matriarch when it bore into the very core of her being.

“Yes my diamond.” Came the timid whisper from Blue Pearl, who saluted and curtsied before she walked off the sides and went down the smaller set of stairs meant for her use that lay beside the main steps which lead up towards the command throne, as she was far more miniscule than the one she served.

“Y- yes, my diamond.” Sapphire at last said, keen to not draw the ire of her creator. When she heard the dainty footsteps of Blue Pearl as they approached she raised one of her hands up so that the diamond’s servant may take it and guide her into imprisonment. 

The moment Sapphire entered the cell, Blue Pearl stepped out and she could hear the sound of buttons being pressed before another noise came. It was one of the arcing electricity that sounded out the activation of the destabilisation field in front, now making the cell a fully enclosed box where there was to be no escape from within. 

Now the only way she would be let out is if she should be granted amnesty, or be consigned to execution.

  
  


#####

“Disgusting.” Bolt commented on Sapphire’s treatment. “For how mighty I've been told the diamonds are, they seem to show plenty of cowardice.” He said after taking a pause to think over what he had been told.

“How so?” Ammolite asked. It was her turn to be curious as she wondered what part of the story prompted him to say that since she had been, for the most part, trying to paint Blue Diamond as cold and invincible.

“Programming someone to be able to instinctively know what to do so they can complete their work unhindered is understandable, but to program them to be compulsively loyal? Pathetic. Do they not have enough confidence in their own skills as leaders that they place purpose-built shackles on their subjects’ minds instead?” He took his turn to share his frustrations too.

“Though in the end, look at what good that did them, they still lost one of the precious members of their authority to an uprising. If they intended to make every being in their ‘perfect’ empire a thrall, then they should at least have done it more thoroughly or not at all.” Bolt said, sounding as if he had nearly entered a monologue.

“I suppose that is one way of interpreting their methods.” Ammolite replied slowly. Despite having been the one to suffer a diamond’s wrath, she was left somewhat dumbstruck by the sheer raw callousness that came from him. 

“Interpreting? I think it was more an assessment of their obvious failures.” He replied with contempt. “But perhaps I should be glad the diamonds did such a shale job, otherwise I would never have met you or the others.” He added, his voice growing gentler at the end of the rant as he began to subconsciously hug Ammolite’s forehead tighter, now no longer only to cling onto her as she moved, but also in genuine childlike affection.

“Either that, or we were simply stronger than the shackles that they created to bind us.” Ammolite said with a prideful smirk.

“You know, that may just be the better explanation.” Bolt playfully agreed with an encouraging giggle, raising his head up so she could hear his compliment better before going into quiet rumination. 

“I know that Sapphire did survive, else you would not be here talking to me today. But that does bring up the question, how does Pearl eventually factor into all of this?” He asked.

“Like I said earlier, mere convenience. Sapphire may have been blind, though because of Pink Diamond’s shattering what remained of her court was split up among Blue and Yellow Diamond seeing as it would have been such a waste to recycle so many already manufactured gems who were otherwise still fit for duty.” Ammolite recalled.

“And as luck would have it, one of the gems that were redirected to the blue court was none other than a lone, ownerless pink pearl.”

#####

**Carinus 4, Main warp hub**

On the northern pole of the colony sat a massive structure, and though it was not tall by any stretch of the imagination, it was wide enough to cover an area similar to an entire city sector. White crystalline ground stretched nearly to the horizon, the only other features upon it being hundreds of tiered circular ziggurats with warp pads, made of the same white crystalline material, that jutted up above the floors on each tier.

And on the centre was a single, enormous and ornate pad, studded with evenly spaced geometrically shaped crystal structures on its outer perimeter that glowed brilliantly with all colours of the rainbow when the light struck it. Meanwhile on its flanks were two life size depictions of Blue Diamond on podiums, posed with her face staring up to the heavens on either side - the constructs demanding absolute respect from any onlooker with their striking presence.

Now _this_ was what a galaxy warp was supposed to look like. This was a place truly worthy of its name, its grandeur reflecting the greatness of its task as it ferried people to other pads, both in domestic destinations within the same system along with flinging them across to planets that were potentially opposites to eachother in the galaxy in mere minutes at most. These constructs meant logistics were near a non-issue, and so they allowed the Empire to project their influence across the stars themselves with trivial ease.

Because of its sheer importance, the area would normally be chiming with the signature ring of warp pad activations at a nigh constant state, which signalled that tens of thousands gems would be moving to and fro as they made their way to wherever they were called to be. Starships too should have been filling the sky, with fiery trails coming from their engines whilst they flew in the high atmosphere and waited to land at port.

But today the area seemed practically deserted. Only a small host of the nobility crowded around the main warp pad in neat rows, all of them doing their best to maintain the thin veneer of perfection as they stood still in their silent sorrowful vigil, their elaborately formed courtly dresses lazily swaying in the wind as they did.

This mood seemed to be shared across the whole colony, as nearly every other gem had gone into a state of mourning once the news of Pink Diamond’s shattering being confirmed had reached the colony - the sheer shock of a diamond being broken having brought everything to a standstill. Even these high ranking gems would have taken the time off to grieve too had it not been for the order for them to come here.

Suddenly, a massive pillar of ghostly blue light erupted from the central warp pad. Upon its dissipation it revealed a small battalion composed of the stout red bodies of ruby guards standing in formation. Upon disembarking from the pad a blue garnet stepped out from the crowd to direct the rubies to follow her so that they may receive a new post to work at and barracks to operate from. 

Instantly they complied and marched in line behind her until they reached one of the smaller domestic warp pads that would bring them to their new posts. When the tramp of feet was silenced by another chime coming from behind, the rest of the aristocrats were once again left in silence as they awaited the next batch of gems for them to take charge of to arrive. 

Though among the group was one who was not meant to lead, but to be led.

Sapphire stood there too, at the back of the group hanging her head low in shame as to not attract any attention to her production flaw, and in doing so she avoided the usual signs of disapproval that usually came with any recognition of it. Barely a few days ago her life had been spared, if only just, when the Holly Blue Agate leading the human zoo confirmed with Blue Diamond that a human had indeed given life to five more all in the same event at the time Sapphire had prescribed. 

The mix of circumstances - with the resource shortages, her own value and the sudden amount of unowned pearls due to their owners becoming casualties of the war meant that Blue Diamond had deemed it acceptable that she would be left alive - despite the usually damning manufacturing error she exhibited - and be given a pearl to act as her eyes so she would be able to perform her duties properly without walking into a wall half of the time.

This was also due to the fact that many of the elite from the other courts had so far mostly refused to take ownership of any gem from the pink pearl line, seeing them not only as hand-me-downs, but also because of the fact that they clashed with the neatly organised monochrome palettes they tried to achieve. Sapphire sighed as she realised the further belittling from her peers that would come because of her owning a pink pearl. Nevertheless, she had to take it on the chin if she wished to avoid the alternative.

Suddenly, the fret in her mind was silenced by another loud chime that came from in front of her, but in place of the raucous hardened march of rubies, there was instead a barely perceptible click-clack of low heeled shoes landing daintily on the solid floor that belonged to what she foresaw to be a small troupe of no more and no less than seventeen pearls.

One of these footsteps grew louder far quicker than the rest and it sounded as if it was coming from a source directly in front of her, which made Sapphire realise that the pearl reassigned to be her guide was already making their way over. Then just as the steps reached their peak volume, which admittedly was still ghostly quiet, they stopped.

“New owner recognised: Sapphire, Facet-1H3M, Cut-2TF.” A smooth, yet nearly machine-like voice called out her designation as if reading from a pre-made script. “Greetings my Sapphire, I am here to serve as your personal pearl.” Pearl announced as she finished with a bow, not that Sapphire could see any of it.

“I see...” Sapphire replied awkwardly, not knowing any other way to respond to her new servant’s blank words.

“I also have a directive to act as your sight as you cannot see, do you wish for it to be performed?” She asked, causing Sapphire to inwardly wince at the irony of her previous choice of words.

“Yes, that would be commendable.” She agreed, then upon the words being said Pearl shot her arm down and grabbed onto Sapphire’s hand with a strange mechanical grace. While she had shocked the noblewoman with the suddenness of the action, her grasp had left her otherwise unharmed with how oddly gentle it was. 

“Take me to the 240th floor of the spire on sector-3 in City-9.” Sapphire finally requested to be brought to her first proper assignment after an uncomfortably long silence, not realising that she needed to command the pearl before they would do most things. 

“As you wish my Sapphire. Moving to the closest domestic warp pad now.” Pearl intoned with a nod, as if Sapphire would be able to see it. When they lurched forwards to move, she could not help but be reminded of the last time when someone else had taken her away, brutish soldiers surrounding her in every direction to haul her as if she was nothing more than scrap meant to be recycled.

Yet this was nothing like that. If anything, there was something oddly reassuring about being taken somewhere by this Pearl since there was nothing to fear from them. No reprisal, no insults, no violence - only the calm quiet of an attendant that was both dedicated to her well being and happy to be able to work for somebody. Though not exactly the most cordial company to be around, she was still the first friendly figure who Sapphire had been with, and at that she was grateful.

As she sensed the changes in elevation and the feel of the ground beneath her feet, she braced herself as a chime sang out from all around her, signalling the creation of a pillar of light that marked her departure. Her destination was on the same planet, however it may as well have been in another world of its own. It was a world abound with intrigue, abound with plots, abound with gossip.

At that moment, she was sent away headfirst into the cutthroat world of aristocratic politics.

#####

“Let me guess, every other upper crust she met later wished her disgraced or dead?” Bolt asked rhetorically, as if the answer was already obvious to him. He was understandably irritated by the bloated state of leadership, even more so by the pretentious etiquette they then utilised to cast a gleaming illusion to cover their sly and corrupted power struggles.

“Considering the Empire’s attitudes I can not blame you for thinking that way, but strangely enough the answer is no.” Ammolite corrected.

“Really? What happened to her instead then?”

“Sapphire’s flaw ostracised her from the rest of the court and made it hard for her to make any allies, which meant no one saw her as a direct threat to their power. Though just because she was not the target of their schemes certainly did not mean she was left alone entirely.” She said, sounding despondent as her memories came flooding back.

“Wait, so was she still caught up in their schemes, but left at their mercy as a pawn or tool?” Bolt guessed, his tone becoming sympathetic as he heard of more of her plight.

“Perceptive.” She said with a shudder of breath, secondhand misery from her past building up in her chest. “One by one the other elites would form an invisible queue to slander and manipulate Sapphire through whatever method they felt like using. Sapphire was tough and she resisted them, though she could only ever keep it up for so long before giving in. Day after day this would happen, and they would only leave her alone once they got what they wanted from her.” She said, taking a break and drawing a short breath before continuing.

“To them, she was not the venerated and sometimes feared seers most Sapphires were, but a mere fortune teller that told them who would plot against them next, or who they should move to ally with in the future. Then there was Pearl. Oh, Pearl could only ever watch in the background, never being able to voice her thoughts against those above her, even if her owner was being threatened by them.” Came the rest of the answer as she gulped some air in an attempt to quash the discomfort within.

“Nine hundred years. _Nine hundred whole damn years_ we had to endure that.” She whispered to herself, all of four her fists clenching in equal measures of rage and grief. 

“Ammolite, are you sure you want to continue speaking? No one is forcing you to carry on if you do not want to.” Bolt’s hushed, comforting voice informed her as he softly laid his cheek back down on her head.

He laid this way for a time, slowly, almost intuitively, moving his neck in a slight circular motion to massage the soft baby fat on his cheeks on her out of an automatic attempt to try and console the fusion. Bolt felt himself rising up and down lazily as Ammolite at last took a deep inhale and exhale to relieve her anguish, wiping away the lone tear that leaked out as she did. 

Though this was not a tear birthed from sadness, on the contrary, it was a subtle joyful response to the kind action of the precious youth roosting on her shoulders. While he knew it not, ever since the off colours took him in after his enigmatic pod had landed at their feet, his influence made them happier than they had ever felt in centuries. Even when he was tiny enough to cradle and all he could do was coo, laugh and wiggle around, the unconditional love he showed since day one to the band of outcasts that no one else ever did meant everything to them.

_‘Do not ever let anybody tell you any different Bolt.’_

“What? And stop just as we get to the best part?” She replied, her spirit now sounding unexpectedly upbeat. “Now we arrive at the end of Sapphire and Pearl’s journey...” Ammolite smiled as one of the only fond memories of her components’ time as subjects of the Empire resurfaced in her mind.

“And the beginning of mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> There may be a ton of scene changes in this chapter and the next because of the flashback format since I was trying to find a way of retelling the past without having Ammolite just describing it while still allowing her and Bolt to interact since that seemed a lot more interesting to write.


	10. Descent: Chapter 3

**Homeworld, Upper class sector of City-17**

Homeworld - the aptly named gleaming capital of the Empire. It was an ecumenopolis that housed in the low hundreds of billions of gems, architecture scarcely imagined by mortal minds soared into the lower parts of the stratosphere or floated above with the use of antigravity technology, their tops glinting in the afternoon sun as thousands of hovering vehicles flew past every minute in the purposely engineered lanes of open air left between the buildings. Not a single patch of suitable ground was left undeveloped, for everything must serve a purpose. Such was, is, and ever shall be the will of the diamonds.

City-17 itself was one among hundreds of megalopolises that were seamlessly combined with each other by the use of efficient transport infrastructure to form the planet wide city on homeworld. So seamless was it in fact, that if each individual diamond had not chosen their own unique colour scheme and construction style, then nearly everyone who travelled through the world would have been none the wiser as to who's domain they were in at any time.

Lower class gems moved by the millions on the ground level streets of City-17's streets with marching battalions of amethysts led by their respective agates keeping the populace in line with cold, authoritative glares and the roar of thousands of boots pounding as one. Then, in the high enclosed walkways that lay suspended above, were the nobility allowed to make their way on foot in relative peace without the need to face the unappealing prospect of being huddled around with the masses down below. Such was their importance in the daily running of the Empire that it warranted privileges like these, as it could rarely be afforded for them to be impeded.

Within one of these walkways a stream of the regally dressed gems of the blue court, who were the jury of a recent trial, flowed out of the oppressively lit midnight blue room along with their pearls. There was some mess of a situation about a nephrite from one of the outer colonies who was guilty of harbouring illegal fusions within her ship - needless to say the sheer wall of evidence in prosecution meant that she and the fusions were all likely being herded into a prison cell, left to languish before the date of their execution.

Exquisitely carved murals miles long depicting the accomplishments of gemkind flanked the orderly members of the exiting upper crust on either wall and above them on the delicately arched roof. Though the quality of it was unquestionable, they all paid the art little heed, having already seen it countless times before. All of them, that is, except one short blue gem who had never seen these murals in person before, despite the collective decade she had spent on assignments within the city.

She made an effort to hide it, but she was in a foul frame of mind. This was her latest assignment, to act as part of the law on Homeworld itself, yet it appeared if nothing was sacred. Even when in court the other jury members continued to disparage her, and while the high standards of discipline expected in the area meant they could not do it so openly as to ridicule her verbally, they still managed to circumvent that with dirty glares and the like.

"My Sapphire, you seem displeased. Would you like me to perform a song for you?" Pearl asked, and though she kept her eternal mask of mild mannered happiness, as was expected of a pearl, it failed to express what she truly thought about Sapphire. Her mood always appeared to be sour, yet she never wished for her to do anything to improve it even though there had been countless times she would offer to be of help.

"No, It is fine. I have no need for it." Sapphire muttered in an attempt to politely reject, even so the cold way she spoke betrayed her spite as it tried to escape no matter how hard she tried to suppress it. Pearl did not deserve to feel her wrath, conversely she was probably the one person who deserved the absolute opposite treatment from her.

"Such an uncouth pearl that one, always speaking without being spoken to first. No wonder why out of all the remaining gems in the pink pearl line she was handed down to _you_."

' _Not this again.'_ Sapphire brooded as a glower cast itself over her face. Despite the insult, she said nothing in retort, her only visible response to the comment being to speed walk which then forced the attendant holding her hand to similarly increase her pace so she could stay in front and guide, though otherwise Pearl too stayed silent, in spite of possessing similar distaste for the gem now pestering them. It was not her place to question a member of the nobility, even if they so often appeared to be the cause of Sapphire's woes.

"Hmph, why so quiet? Don't you know how unbecoming it is not to respond to others trying to make conversation, or does that gemstone of yours have more flaws than just its placement?"

"Aquamarine. Leave us be." She demanded, the trail of ice crystals growing from beneath her feet as she walked by reflecting the anger that lay barely contained beneath her frigid calm exterior.

"Us? Oh! Are you defending that pearl of yours?! Pfft, I can tell that they're a relatively high quality one, but there's no need to put yourself in front of it, after all I'm not here to harm anyone. Even if I was, you could always acquire a new one." The diplomat mocked with a haughty chuckle while she floated above Sapphire on fairy-like water wings, taunting her from beyond reach.

"Anyway, as I said, I am not here for your pearl. However, by now I expect you know why I've bothered to slow down and spend my precious time catching up with you."

' _She isn't even trying to break me anymore, she just thinks I'll crack at the slightest pressure. Oh I'll show her.'_

"Still trying to be 'strong' and silent? Well hopefully your hearing still works, because I've been meaning to ask about - what was her name again… Ah! Emerald Facet-2L5G, Cut-9XI. I know she might be from a different court, but you _see_ -"

"YOU SHUT YOUR DIAMONDS DAMNED MOUTH YOU CLOD!" Sapphire shouted at Aquamarine just as she was about to laugh at their own pun, releasing all her pent up fury in a banshee like screech as a miniature blizzard exploded out of her. Her powers froze the immediate area, causing the offending Aquamarine to yelp as she hit the ground, her wings turned to ice from the blast.

"I HAVE WAITED TOO LONG TO DO THIS TO ONE, JUst… one of you pebbles." She exclaimed, teetering off into a suppressed sob at the end. Then, a ball of light surrounded her hands as they heralded her weapons being summoned - a set of blue knuckle dusters tipped with nail sized crystalline spikes. It was a highly inappropriate and aggressive act for a member of the aristocracy, yet at this point Sapphire could care less, even if she would be shattered for it.

"Pearl, hold her up for me. Please." At this request, the servant could visibly be seen having the physical equivalent of an error message when her programming started to contradict itself, her face wiped blank and her back forced to be stiffened ramrod straight whilst she processed what in the stars she was supposed to do.

She had been ordered by her owner to pick up Aquamarine, a seemingly simple task. While it would normally have been trivially easy to proceed - considering her owner told her to do it, the size difference not being in favour of her target, and the fact the other gem was slipping on the cold surface in failed attempts to stand back up - it was made infinitely more complicated since it would be breaking with the deeply entrenched deference her type had for anyone above them.

' _Wait… please?'_ Pearl realised what was said to her, making it so she sunk deeper into befuddlement and almost devolved to sputtering, but caught herself in time. Had Sapphire asked her instead of simply commanding? Though she had always been different compared to how other people treated their pearls, but for her - a sapphire, one of the highest ranking castes in the Empire, to ask her, a pearl, who was practically property in terms of their rank, if she _wanted_ to do something was unheard of.

"As you wish… my Sapphire." She finally complied and walked over to where Sapphire stood, whose fist was already drawn back in preparation, with Aquamarine in hand. Though it was a request and not an outright command, her programming was never made to account for the situation that was currently being presented. It resulted in her defaulting to recognising it as an order from an owner, allowing her to override her other instinct to respect the nobility.

"What the- get off of me you sodding pebble!" Aquamarine protested her treatment as she was hoisted and brought around like a toy doll. "You'll be recycled for this you know, you _defect-_ OOMPH!" She cried out as the spiky fist was forcefully launched onto her chin. Ironically, it was her constant insulting that let Sapphire hear exactly where her mouth was, and so the second strike was sent barrelling towards it to silence her.

"Absolutely disgusting, they should be rejuvenated for that!"

"Rejuvenated? More like shattered and recycled. I don't think even rejuvenation could fix that kind of behaviour."

"That pearl needs to learn its place, keep it on a tighter leash will you."

Sapphire could feel a crackling of nervousness in her gem as she backed away from the source of the voices, the reality of the situation now striking her as hard as she had struck Aquamarine. The commotion of their struggle and the weather her temper created having attracted a substantial amount of the previous jury who now moved to form an angered mob encompassing the guilty duo.

Pearl dropped Aquamarine onto the floor, grabbing Sapphire's hand not to guide her, but out of fear. The two inched backwards, only to be trapped in the other direction too as the thump behind them signalled a trio of amethysts that acted as the guards within the trial room battering the bottom of their halberds on the floor to intimidate them.

Then just as all hope seemed lost, their forms rapidly increased in brightness until they were nothing more than amorphous blobs of pink and blue light with two gemstones floating within. Time stood still, their lights spinning around eachother until it gestalted into a single purple beam that exploded with blinding force as the pair solidified into a new being for the first time.

"Pearl! we- I- need. My Sapphire, what do we- I- do… What the..." She stuttered, part of her mind was in utter terror and tugged at her to run while the other part was trying to comprehend the sight of the present for the first time, for the only other vision she had ever known was trapped within the confines of future. The crackle of paranoia she felt previously erupted tenfold after a cursory look down confirmed her worst fears. The sudden more than doubling in height, four arms and purple body making it nigh undeniable to even the most stubborn refusal of belief.

They had fused.

Her eyes were wide in panic as she scanned the area, only to be met with multiple dozens of sickened and shocked countenances scanning them in return. Now that they had time to process the situation, Sapphire's consciousness began willing her to escape, while Pearl's more meek nature started to buckle in dread, paralyzing them in place - the pressure from the numerous gazes bearing down on her threatened to defuse her as her hardlight body started to light up again and break apart.

"Well? What are you doing just gawking? Haven't you seen what they've done! There's an _off colour_ , standing right there-OOMPH." Aquamarine's tirade was cut short as a far larger knuckle duster, now in purple, slammed into her side as she was standing back up and sent her flying, creating an impression of her body onto the wall upon collision, poofing her in the process and leaving a teardrop shaped light blue gemstone on the floor.

In another hit of irony the obnoxious attitude of the diplomat, in tandem with a renewed sense of self-preservation, reunified the state of the two minds within the fusion. As she re-stabilised and her form knit back together, she capitalised on the shock caused by her creation to escape, seeing no other option if she wanted herself or her components to live. They had fused, and there was no returning to normalcy after that, not that they wished to go back to the lives they had before anyways.

There was nothing good there for them here. Sapphire may have been powerful in theory, nevertheless in practice she was often at the bottom of the order, left to be preyed on by the greedy will of her 'peers', her powers being used for their own end. Then there was Pearl, looked down and sneered at because of who she was assigned to and was little more than a hand-me-down in the minds of many. All the while she had been forced into quiet, left unable to speak out against this treatment, ever chained by her accursed programming.

' _Its now or never,'_ And with that thought, the fusion brought their knuckle dusters crashing into the wall with all the haste she could muster. She would question who or what exactly she was later, for what she did in the present would determine if she would even survive the next few seconds. Her enlarged fist crashed into the tapestry first, crumbling it in a single strike and revealing the solid wall underneath.

By now, she was acutely aware that her vandalisation was bringing the gems around her out of their collective fit as they began to move in order to prevent any more damage being done. Knowing even her increased strength could not hope to break through it in time, she made a few steps backwards, and in desperation she charged shoulder first into the damaged section of wall in the vague hope that her increased mass would punch through with enough speed propelling it.

With one final kick of her legs she leapt forwards and tucked her head in line with her shoulder, crashing through the wall in a flurry of dust and blue debris. Though just as she sensed freedom in the open air for the first time, what minimal momentum she had left over stopped carrying her forwards and she began to fall. Her eyes widened in delayed alarm as she flailed her two pairs of arms around in a panicked, yet futile effort to grab onto a surface which was not there.

Eventually, as her descent continued, she slowed the flailing of her arms before halting entirely, understanding the situation. The fusion spun her body around to look just where she would land, however instead of there being a bustling street or some sort of structural complex below, there was only one of the massive gashes torn into the planet by the gargantuan ancient kindergartens that spawned the first of gemkind. As she stared into it, the black abyss stared at her in return, inviting her to come within.

With nothing else she could do, she faced the sky one more time with the knowledge this was likely the first and last time she would ever see it. The moment was oddly serene, for even if she did poof upon impacting solid rock at over a hundred miles per hour, then she knew that at least the gemstones on her front would be safe.

The varying hues of blue and purple that made up City-17's skyscrapers and streets soon gave way to grey rock and the black of subterranean darkness, the chasm swallowing her at last.

#####

"I… I am sorry you had to go through all of that." Was all Bolt uttered to Ammolite when the holograms depicting her creation finally came to close.

"Don't be, all of it happened millennia ago and none of it was your fault." She assured him.

"I understand, but it feels wrong to me that you had to face so much injustice. You do not seem like a criminal to me, if anything, you are the opposite." He spoke his mind for no other reason than to cheer her up.

"If only the rest of the Empire thought the way you did." Ammolite said, a sigh escaping her lips as her upper pair of arms lifted up to tenderly hold onto his ankles. It was not as if he was in danger of falling off, his cable-like musculature being wrapped around her forehead made quite sure of that. Instead, it was the feeling of warmth that came from having physical company with someone she trusted which motivated her to do so.

"Just promise me that you will go into your rest cycle now that I have kept my end of the bargain." She told him, sounding somewhat cheeky whilst her head moved to the side slightly when addressing him as if to check if he would follow up on the request, despite the reality that she could not actually crane her neck around far enough to do so properly.

"After that? Of course I will." He affirmed with a nod before then closing his eyes and drifting off into a dreamy sleep, the catalapsean node instantly shutting off multiple sections of his brain the moment he willed it to, with only the parts controlling vital functions such as his heartbeat or breathing remaining active.

As his vision shut down he felt himself suddenly awake once more, frigid wind cutting his back. Muddied darkness enveloped him as he searched around, Ammolite's shoulders and head having disappeared from view, now replaced with an open ravine leading down to a craggy floor below. He tried to scream, he tried to widen his eyes in fear, he tried to feel panic, but none of these things came. Despite the situation he found himself in, the only response he made was his body moving to face the sky and emotions of eerie calm emanating from the two gemstones lodged in his forehead and sternum.

' _Gemstones?!'_ Bolt realised as he slammed onto the ground at terminal velocity, the agony of the impact forcing out a distinctly feminine groan of pain from his mouth.

" _Where are we… am I?"_ The words appeared to come from his mouth, but no, that absolutely was not his voice. His may have still have been moderately high-pitched due to his youth, and though this one was vaguely similar in that regard, it had far more age and weariness tinting its tone. As unlikely and unbelievable as it was, the voice coming from what he thought to be his throat belonged to none other than Ammolite.

As he stood to his feet, his suspicions were confirmed with concrete evidence. The first thing that clued him was the body he currently found his consciousness residing in - too tall, too thin and too many limbs. Then came his attire - gone was the hefty gunmetal grey metal plate and black plasteel breechcloth, replaced with a delicate iridescent purple knee length dress and low heeled shoes.

" _Grrnngggh AGH!"_ He heard her cry out as if her words had become his. He was blinded by purple light, a popping noise echoing throughout the wide halls of the kindergarten preluding his point of view being split between two, one nothing but darkness and the other being relatively normal, if a bit dimmer than what his superhuman vision was used to.

" _Pearl! I am so sorry! I didn't know they would come for you, I… I... thought that they would only come for me. DAMN IT I... I was so careless-"_ He, or was it Sapphire? Devolved into a rapid fire apology of sobbing as he- she? Leaned his face onto his own arm- Pearl's arm?

" _My Sapphire, there is no need to be upset, we're alive and we've finally left that wretched place. Isn't that all that matters?"_ He/Pearl cut off himself/Sapphire in an effort to bring up words of consolation.

" _I know! But we were nearly captured up there! Who knows what they would have done to us, we could have been shattered, both of us, and all because I lost my temper once!"_ Despite the help offered, he/Sapphire continued to air his/her grievances for those misguided acts.

_**Vwooom** _

He wanted to feel defiance upon hearing that damned noise, to rise up and strike at the foe, but he was tied to the pair's feelings and the pair's actions. And having been done in the past, it was already set in stone, so there was little he could do aside from having his sentience be forcefully dragged around as they/he turned to the direction of the disturbance. While he knew exactly what caused it, they did not, and as such he sensed confusion beaconing from both of the bodies he occupied.

_**VWOOOM** _

However, the moment he/Pearl caught sight of the source, a spike of trepidation was stabbed at his/her throat upon recognising the four objects that floated down from the surface above. Malevolent blood red light sparked out from their cyclopean eyes, each of them searching a different direction. The sound may have been unfamiliar to the two gems, but to him/Pearl the visuals most certainly were not.

Shattering robinoids.

Though he/she moved to grab onto himself/Sapphire in preparation to make a run for it, they made no movement, not even a single noise regardless that one of the scanners were coming dangerously close to scanning their gemstones. Breath meant to form words were instead twisted by terror to choke him/her, the kickback of feet that should have started to pelt down on the stony floor at full pace were converted to weight that kept him/her on the floor, left to stare at the impending doom with their mouth agape.

But just as all seemed to be on a set course, Bolt was once more put through a mental wringer as half of his consciousness was sucked into Sapphire's meditative state. He/she entered the place where the streams of fate were made visible, wishing to gain insight on why he/Pearl was so silent by the use of limited precognition to gain a short visual of the area in the near future.

Bolt shot awake in a cold sweat, hyperventilating as he did and his twin hearts beating apace. In the short seconds he was privy to a vision he felt death strike a decisive blow on Sapphire, a white energy beam striking her directly in the face where her gemstone was. And though it happened to neither of them, it was so vivid, so _real_ , that he thought himself truly dead for a moment before rousing.

It was already bewildering enough for Bolt to experience something from the perspective of two people at once, no matter how brief the incident was. Though to then experience their emotions, their pain, their struggle while said people are also having a conversation on top of that - nevermind the disturbing experience of being conscious while remaining out of control of his actions - left him in a state of hollowness, his eyes doing little else aside from gazing straight ahead while he comprehended what he had been put through.

He snapped out this trance in a shiver as he sensed all of Ammolite and her components' repressed memories flooding in, now leaving him as a firsthand audience to everything that had caused them even an iota of sadness. Every nerve in his body jittered with pins and needles for a second as he absorbed every negative experience they had ever had - every mild inconvenience, every snide comment made, every insecurity they held. Even all the way to the raw fear of death that enveloped Ammolite when she first came into existence and Sapphire when she met face to face with her creator.

There they were, all swirling in the back of Bolt's mind, pressing him to be awake with their mere presence. In spite of this, he still found some amount of exhausted joy when he stretched his limbs and back upwards, his body now free and doing exactly as he commanded instead of him being shackled within the preconceived movements of another person. However, he soon became markedly aware that they were no longer on the move, Ammolite having halted in her tracks.

"Did you feel that?" Bolt asked her, his breath slowing back close to normal as he did, wondering if it was the activation of this latent ability - that he assumed to be his - which caused her to come to a stop.

"Was… was that you?" Ammolite deflected with another question, shaken by the event as well. She seemed distant, yet at the same time almost refreshed, the weight piled onto her psyche by centuries of sorrow and regrets being wiped away by what were supposedly Bolt's powers. The memories were still there, that much was certain, but when she tried to remember, none of the heavy baggage once associated with many of them came. As she cycled through them there was no violent storm of angst or worry, only a peaceful pond of plain neutrality.

"I am not entirely sure. But yes, I believe it might have been me." He replied with slow uncertainty, dwelling in disbelief for a moment on every word.

"Well, in that case thank you."

"Thank me? What did it do to you?" He queried.

"I… I have no words to describe it in any detail, but simply know that you have lifted a number of burdens on my old mind." Ammolite replied with a kindly dismissive chuckle, also in partial disbelief of what happened, yet still thankful for it. "Now, about your rest cycle."

"I will try to re-enter it, but I cannot make any promises after _that._ "

As Ammolite picked up the pace once more, Bolt restlessly moved around as much as he could while poised on her shoulders. For a time he tried laying his head in different ways or fluffing up her hair to make it more comfortable, even attempting to sleep through brute force via activation of the catalapsean node. However, it was only after a few minutes when the prickling sensation burying his body and mind at last subsided did the organ comply, shutting down most of his brain once more.

Unlike previously, his dreams were peaceful this time and formed of his own memories, not another's. An orange face smiled down on his miniature, stubby form as she cradled him in her arms while the faces of four others crowded around him, each one of them taking their turns to crouch down to his face level and be enamoured by him. He stretched his chubby arm out to meet the latest figure who took their turn to look at him, grabbing their pointy nose and eliciting a laugh from the person moments after, in turn causing him to giggle with them.

' _Padparadscha and Rhodonite.'_ He realised who the figures were. ' _How I miss you two. How I miss all of you.'_ A wearied smile subconsciously broke out on his slumbering face, full of longing fondness.

"I miss them too Bolt, but do not worry, we will find them soon enough." Ammolite whispered soothingly, her precognition letting her see his thoughts. Careful not to wake the boy, she caressed his lower legs one last time before leaving him be and continuing her march ever onwards, deeper into the planet's crust.

#####

"There they are!" A voice called out excitedly to her teammates, gesturing them with a wave of their hand to peer over the ledge.

"Are you sure that's the one?" She questioned, the doubt obvious in her words as she kept watch on the pair from the top of the canyon.

"Yes, you can bet your shards on it." The first one said, confirming with a certain nod.

"They're the one who poofed _the_ Jasper?" The second one asked again.

"Saw them do it with my own vision spheres, did it pretty savagely too." the first gem replied enthusiastically.

"But they're so… so small compared to her! I think you've been following the wrong person." A third voice exclaimed, incredulous at the first one.

"Hey! First off, I've been tracking them ever since I first heard the commotion of the fight. Second, not all of us are built like you Ro-"

"Cut it you two. Even if they ain't what we're looking for, they're still more recruits to the cause." The second voice commanded the others.

"They're on the move again." The third gem announced, prompting the rest of the group to silence themselves as they left their position to continue shadowing the thing and the fusion who carried it.

This was the biggest break they have had in millennia, and they were not about to let this opportunity go to waste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> Describing what Bolt's emotional absorption abilities did from his perspective was quite hard, but I think it turned out well in the end.


	11. Descent: Chapter 4

She ducked low and tackled the amethyst fusion by the legs, continuing to run nonetheless as the soldier kneed her left face's chin multiple times in an effort to dislodge her. The ground itself shook as the titans clashed, giant marks being embedded into the rock with every footstep they took. The roar of cracking stone signified to Hydrazine that the amethyst collided with the pillar, as such she moved to the side while a shower of debris rained down on the purple behemoth.

Beaten but unbowed, the amethyst smashed aside the material that temporarily buried them and rose from the rubble, axe in hand as they charged forwards and attempted to corner Hydrazine in a contest of raw strength she could not possibly hope to win. But she knew better than to humour them, and so she continued to crouch, hop and dive out of the way of the axe strikes, waiting for the correct opening before she would attack back.

The amethyst, despite the stoic soldier they looked to be on the outside, grew increasingly infuriated at Hydrazine's actions. Every consecutive axe swing they made grew more swift, more aggressive, more powerful and forced the illicit fusion to be far quicker on her feet if she wished to avoid evisceration.

"AGH!"

_**CRACK** _

She had been a fraction of a second too slow, and she paid for it with both her right hands. The severed limbs flew up into the air, poofing in a cloud of teal dust that was sent flying away by the wind. Biting through the pain she found the will to concentrate, they had been locked in combat for stars knows how long by now, but her life hung in the balance here, and she could barely afford a moment of laxity. They needed to keep Hydrazine together, for individually they would have no chance of survival.

However, the opportunity had at last presented itself. With the amethyst's axe stuck in the ground by the sheer force of her strike, she was occupied with wrenching it out of the fissure she had cut into the ground. Now did Hydrazine rise to the occasion and she ran to them at full pace, two mouthfuls of fire already billowing within, ready to incinerate the soldier.

Burning liquid fuel poured out of her mouths while she made her approach, dousing her opponent's body in a blazing shower before she followed it up with a sprinting punch, both of her left hands curled into fists that connected squarely on the middle of the amethysts abdomen. The warrior stumbled backwards, but their grip on their axe remained strong, and the momentum from Hydrazine's strike only aided them in finally tearing it out.

Unlike the amethyst, Hydrazine was scarcely built for battle, and so she began to visibly tire after how long their duel had lasted. Desperate to end it before the soldier would win through simple attrition, she closed the gap between them before the axe could be brought to bear again, then with a jumping uppercut she slammed her upper left hand precisely onto their jaw with all every scrap of strength she had left.

The blow stunned the amethyst, a sickening crack reverberated throughout the caverns as they momentarily flew low in the air, launched off of their feet by the attack. Their massive form crashed on the floor with a resounding boom, leaving a crater in their wake and sending shards of broken rock flying out all around them and kicking up a substantial dust cloud.

Hydrazine hauled herself back to where the pillar had collapsed, and with struggling breath she hoisted a boulder that had cracked off from it above her head, carefully balancing it between her upper left hand and the stumpy wrist which once was her upper right hand. There was an air of foreboding calm around Hydrazine as she stood over the dazed amethyst, continuing to hold the boulder all the while, as if waiting for something to happen before she would drop it.

The amethyst's form glowed a stunning purple that preluded the break apart into five, far smaller, demoralised soldiers who lay gloomily at the bottom of the crater. They were far too worn out to fight back now, they understood that they were beaten, and they accepted their fate. Though this was what she had been waiting for, she continued to stand there, her dual-headed gaze glaring down on them with unbarred resentment.

Neither Hydrazine nor her components had any sympathy for the ones who represented the militant arm of a regime that had persecuted them for millennia. She looked down at them as they sat there, broken and defeated, yet their expressions remained so defiant against her. This lasted for a weighted minute until with a final sneer in distaste from both her faces, she plunged the boulder down, shattering all of them in a single instant.

Though multiple lives were snuffed out all at once by her action, guilt afflicted her for no longer than a second, for she knew if she had been the one to fall then they would have treated her with much the same, if not more, contempt than she had delivered to them. Now with the deed done Hydrazine collapsed backwards onto the floor, laying there and doing nothing but breathing in and out for a time to recuperate.

Bright teal light filled the abyss as her sizeable form lit up in its entirety, then with an echoing pop a red, pink and orange ball of light exploded outwards from her upon her dissipation. As they fell onto the ground they solidified, leaving her components in discomfort on the hard ground until one by one they started to stand up once more.

"Ghh… Not that I have anything against any of you, but can we agree not to fuse into Hydrazine again unless we really have to?" Rhodonite groaned out while she slowly clambered onto her feet, gripping her own right hand which was still sore from combat.

"Mhmm, I think that'd be for the best." Rightile replied matter-of-factly, coughing hoarsely twice at the end of her sentence, similarly being affected by a phantom pain in her right hand that raged on despite them having unfused and no longer suffering from the injury Hydrazine had.

"Yeah, I feel like that'd be for the better." Leftile mirrored her twins' opinion while rubbing her jaw, a mild drawl present in her tone as the two clumsily coordinated their usually well-synchronised movements to stand back up.

Still partially disoriented from the experience of holding such a large fusion for so long under stressful conditions, the group took some time to come back to their senses. Despite the expansive size of the kindergartens and how similar each and every single part of it looked, the off colours had lived within these crags for thousands of years, and so they each had memorised a detailed mental map of the area.

It would be nigh impossible for them to be truly lost, or so they thought.

"We must have fallen a long, long way huh?" Rhodonite asked no one in particular, turning her head around to take in the unfamiliar landscape.

"I agree, being together in Hydrazine was… tiring to say the least. But being together normally isn't at all that bad!" Padparadscha at last responded - her usual upbeat demeanour only slightly diminished by the life and death struggle - while rubbing the back of her neck, her perception of time finally catching up to the previous question.

"Hey! Nice work on dealing with those amethysts, who knows what sort of damage they would've done if they kept running amok down here." A voice called out, startling the group with its suddenness, yet its amicable nature also worked to calm them in equal measure.

"Hello," "who's there?" The Rutiles asked one after the other, both beginning to stare up at the ruined stone pillar, which was where the voice seemed to emanate out of.

"Er, you're welcome I guess." Rhodonite responded as she faced upwards, grateful at the compliment, but also confused at who the source was.

"I have been gifted with an uncertain vision! A mysterious voice will call down to us, they will have good intentions, but who or what could it be?" She said, as if sharing some grand revelation.

"Yeah Pad, we-"

"Oh! They're a Blue Zircon!"

"...Didn't know that, huh, thanks." Rhodonite said instead, her exasperation instantly converted into curiosity. "A Zircon? I wonder how they got down here." She muttered to herself, for unless they were born an off colour, there was little that the lawyers could possibly do to be banished. They often kept to themselves between cases, so there was little chance of illicit fusion. Then even in the short time they mixed with other gems, those gems would often be defects and dissidents who they would rarely have much sympathy for.

"Whu?" The now identified Zircon sputtered, leaning out of the exit hole they were hiding in while activating the more advanced features of their monocle to scan the group. "How did you know- ah I see, you've got a type of sapphire down there with you."

"That would be me." Padparadscha said with a wave after some time had passed, looking up to face the blue light shining down on her before it moved on to look at the Rutiles and Rhodonite. However, their previous experiences with scanners caused them to instantly jump back slightly from the light, but they otherwise made no more movements as they knew the source of it was likely friendly.

"Ah sorry, where are my manners." She apologised, her hand being put near her left eye where she proceeded to shut off the offending device upon seeing the distress it caused. "I will be down there in a second, then we can have a proper conversation."

The former lawyer pulled out an amorphous mass of blue light from the gemstone on her right wrist that solidified into a similarly coloured sledgehammer. The weapon was roughly three quarters her height in length and possessed a cuboid shaped head nearly as wide as her own waist, yet the superior strength of gem physiology meant she could hoist it with little problem. She then chucked it forwards, maintaining a good grip on the handle with both hands, and as it started to fall the object's center of mass caused it to begin to straighten its descent path.

Following on soon after with practised precision, Zircon jumped out with the weapon, still making sure her hold on the long handle remained strong. Despite the fact she was falling she kept calm, and so her focus was instead shifted to balancing both her feet on either side of the hammer's head. At last both she and the weapon impacted the ground, sending shards of rock and dust flying upwards. As the grey mist cleared, it revealed her standing perfectly upright on the hammer - as if it was a podium and she was about to deliver a speech - looking rather pleased with herself.

"Ehehe, that never gets old." Blue Zircon quietly chuckled to herself as she hopped off of the hammer's head and lifted it back up to rest on her right shoulder, all the while dusting her well-kept uniform with her spare arm. "Well since you now know about me, I have to ask, who are all of you?"

"Rhodonite." She introduced simply as she offered her hand in greeting, to which Zircon politely accepted in a brief but firm shake as they were nearest to eachother.

"We are-" "-the Rutile twins." They told her.

"I believe you already know who I am." She said cheerily after an awkwardly long wait, eliciting a curt nod from Zircon.

"That I do." She said slowly in response. "Now that the pleasantries are done, I do wonder, what did all of you do to garner the attention of actual soldiers? Normally the Empire is content enough to just send those stars-damned shattering robonoids down here and nothing more." Zircon asked, in slight awe of the kind of defiance they must have shown to warrant that sort of action being taken.

"We didn't actually do anything on purpose. In fact, we didn't know why they came after us until their Agate-"

"Agate?!" Zircon blurted out, stupefied that whatever the off colours did justified for such a high ranking officer to also be sent against them. "Oh, pardon me, carry on."

"...As I was saying. The Agate leading them did their whole charade of listing off our crimes, which apparently included the illegal possession of a human." Rhodonite answered, subtly annoyed at having been interrupted, but making no show of it on the outside.

"A human you say? How did you even get a hold of one?" She questioned, mildly doubtful of their testimony. Though she could understand how the theft of such a valuable specimen which had only a single, heavily guarded, heavily limited source within the galaxy would lead to such consequences, those same facts meant that she found it hard to swallow the idea that one managed to find its way onto homeworld.

"Here's the thing, we didn't even know they were a human or what one looked like until she told us he was one. I mean, I knew about the human zoo, but none of us have ever been anywhere near there." She explained to them, sounding similarly incredulous of her own claims now that she had heard it be said aloud.

"Then where did it come from? It's not like a human could just be _conjured_ out of thin air." Zircon stated, a raised circular hand gesture proceeding her words to emphasise them.

"That was…" Leftile began after nearly half a minute of quiet, also in disbelief of what she was about to say. "Exactly what happened." Rightile finished slowly, in return causing Zircon's only response being to make a muddled facial expression that practically demanded for the twins to expand further on what they said.

"He appeared a few months ago when we were running from a swarm of shattering robonoids, though shortly before he came we were trying to block the tunnel they were coming from with a boulder."

"But we weren't fast enough and a few of the robonoids managed to enter our refuge - that was when his pod arrived."

"One moment we were about to be scanned and shattered, and the next the robonoids were gone and all that was left was his pod half buried in the ground."

"There were… hostilities at first when we tried to open it, but he quickly calmed down and we tried to talk with him."

"While he couldn't say anything, we still thought it would be wrong to leave him there to fend for himself, so we took him in." The twins finished the heavily abridged version of Bolt's adoption, realising how ridiculous much of it sounded. Though in this case, it seemed as if fact was indeed stranger than fiction, as Bolt's existence was enough to prove these were real events.

"Heh, he couldn't speak a word and was tiny enough to hold when we first found him, but now he can speak like any upper crust and he's grown to be close to my height without any sign of stopping." Rhodonite commented, strangely proud of how far the child had come despite not having any relation with him.

While the Rutiles were busy with listing out the events, Zircon had taken the opportunity to activate another one of her monocle's features, projecting a near transparent holoscreen a forearm's length away from her face, and was rapidly typing out everything they told her in a rough document. Her sharp skills and knowhow in data analysis - which were once vital in forming court cases - were not forgotten, rather they were reshaped for use elsewhere.

And so her eyes squinted at the screen as she noticed a major detail in the story she had been given. "You said a pod containing this human appeared a few months ago, correct? If so, then how have they not run out of energy?"

"What do you-" "-mean by that?"

"Humans are organics and so, if I remember correctly, they need to consume organic material and water every few days to stay alive. However - there is no substantial enough source of suitable organic material and water in the kindergartens, or on Homeworld." She explained, leaving the implication to sink in.

"I've never seen Bolt consume anything, but he seems perfectly fine." Padparadscha answered after no one else did, shrugging her shoulders as she did not know he managed it.

"That's impossible!" Zircon half shouted, perhaps a little too angrily, though it was more due to the details not aligning the way they should have, and not because of the off colours. "Sorry for raising my voice. Anyhow, I may not be the most knowledgeable on organics, but from what I do know, none of what you describe should be possible."

"Don't worry, all is forgiven" The seer replied after a delay of a few seconds, the sincerity of it made evident by the sweetness in her tone. "Though I do agree, if what you say is correct, then it is odd that Bolt is still functioning."

"I assume that 'Bolt' is the human's designation?" She asked the off colours, a nod in confirmation then coming from each one of them.

"Stars, he and Fluorite are still up there aren't they? How are they supposed to find us again?" Rhodonite suddenly came to a grave realisation, all this talk about the child reminding her of where he was previously.

"At least he's safe, he did poof that Jasper-" "-and Holly Blue Agate before we fell after all." The Rutiles said, granting some partial solace to the fusion's mind.

"Wait, did you say this 'Bolt' poofed a _Jasper_?" Zircon said, the surprise in her voice muted but tangible, her head snapping to their direction as soon as they finished speaking. She closed the document she was previously working on, instead bringing up what appeared to be a communication log with another person - full of text, images and even video.

"Yes." "Yeah." Rightile and Leftile replied one after the other, causing fascination to seep further into Zircon.

"I think we may just be looking for the same person." She murmured as she opened up a file that contained footage sent to her by an ally, and in the process drawing the curiousity of the off colours. They gathered at a respectful distance behind her and watched on in anticipation, the possible scenario her words hinted at having sparked a sense of hope within each of them.

The video appeared to have been taken from directly above, the filmer being cooped up inside a far up exit hole where they were mostly safe from the battle, aside from the time when the human was flung into the wall by the Jasper. His impact created cracks which grew dangerously close to where they sat, causing them to exclaim as they gripped onto the rock for stability while they waited for the shock on the wall to pass.

Zircon slid her index finger across the screen and skipped past that part then into the relevant section instead, where she then paused just as the human turned around so the off colours could try to recognise him. Their sullen face was as clear as day, there was no mistaking who it was - the metal plating around his chest, the enigmatic symbol displayed on it and his distinctly bald head - all of it concrete evidence of his identity. He was battered and bruised, but thankfully alive.

"There, that's-" "definitely him!" The Rutiles exclaimed while pointing at the recording.

"Is this person still following him?" Rhodonite asked, wishing to gain an updated status about his and possibly Fluorite's safety.

"They should be, but I'll confirm with them now." Zircon said, closing the screen soon after and bringing up a list of contacts.

" _Pery, this is Zircon. Do you still have a visual on the target?"_ She typed up the words on the screen before sending them.

" _Yes I do, they are currently accompanied by a fusion. Their height and figure makes me think it's a mix of a pearl and something else, but because of how far I'm watching them from I can't be totally sure."_ The reply came after nearly a minute.

"Ammolite." Rhodonite whispered, quickly realising who the person being described was even though they had not been independent from Fluorite for many millennia. "Can you ask them to send you another image, just so we can be sure about who they are?"

"Of course, just a moment."

" _Pery, a quick request, but can you take a fresh image of the target and send it to me?"_

" _Sure, here it is right now on an attached file. Have fun ogling over more data, but don't pop your rocks off."_ 'Pery' replied rather snidely in jest after roughly fourty seconds. Zircon fumed slightly, knowing full well the off colours saw those words on her screen despite her having speedily opened the file to hide them.

But they made no remarks about, for they were now far more focused on picking over the image, and as small as the people on it may have been due to the distance between them and 'Pery', there was absolutely no doubt as to who they were, even if it was also taken from behind and above. It was the willowy, purple and four armed form of Ammolite along with Bolt's peacefully resting, well-sculpted body sitting comfortably on her shoulders with his trademark crude metal chestplate.

"I take it from the stunned silence that these are the people you were looking for?" She asked, though still with her back to the group as to keep the monocle in front of them.

"Yes, that's them alright. It's good to know they're safe and all, but we're separated by a few miles of the planet's crust, how in the stars are they going to be able to find us?" Rhodonite voiced her thoughts.

"Ah I see… If the vision I have received proves true, then Ammolite will meet us later as she will use her own future vision to learn where we will be. How inventive of her!" Padparadscha announced her late premonition to the group, assuring them somewhat.

"Another Sapphire?" Zircon said, her interest piqued, as it was incredibly rare for any functioning version of any high ranking aristocrat to turn away from the Empire. "I was going to ask Pery to meet them personally so she could guide them to our base eventually, but I suppose that works too."

"You have-" "-a base?" The Rutiles asked, their own interest caught by the statement.

"Ah yes, that does remind me of why I came here in the first place. Your arrival as that huge fusion or your battle with that amethyst wasn't the most subtle and it caught our attention, so I was sent out to bring all of you in."

"Our? And what do you mean by 'bring in'?" Rhodonite questioned, her interest also now ensnared.

"I'm part of a group, you see. With the rest of the Empire throwing us out then wanting us dead, some off colours and other disgraced gems long ago decided that they should look after one another. Since then we've actively tried to find more hapless gems to take in, at this point we're about a few hundred strong now." Zircon explained proudly.

"That sounds-" "-great!"

"You can count me in."

"That is wonderful to hear."

"Good to see you're all enthusiastic about this. Come, follow me." Zircon said, turning around to face a tunnel and flicking her spare hand upwards to gesture to the off colours. Her holoscreen remained on, and now she tapped on it for another time to bring up a top down map of the layer of the planet they were currently on.

"I mean, how can we not be?" Rhodonite asked rhetorically as she began to follow. "So, how did you begin? I can't imagine it was any easy with all these robonoids… shattering us left and right."

"I'm not one of the founders, but I do know their story." She said, going into contemplative quiet for a moment as she tried to find a way to easily summarise it. "Because of the rebellion, for a few centuries around the end of era 1 and the start of era 2, the prisons of homeworld were flooded with wanted criminals awaiting trial." She stopped speaking for a moment to take a deep breath, bitter memories of her participation in convicting so many of the accused rising from the back of her mind.

"But there were a few - our founders - who fought their way out of the prisons. With the skills they learnt during the battles on Earth, they managed to fight off the robonoid swarms and saved many people who were about to be shattered by them in the process." Zircon recounted. "For millennia we have been doing this, finding lost gems and taking them in if they wanted it, though not many have declined that offer."

"Looks like we're not the only ones giving the Empire a headache with our existence then." Rhodonite said jokingly.

"Hmm, I imagine you could look at it that way." Zircon replied in good humour "But that does make me curious, how did all of you find eachother and form your own little group? Because that doesn't happen all too often, but whenever it does I find the tales are always quite compelling." She said sincerely as she continued to follow the map projected out of her monocle.

"It would take a while to explain how each one of us here met." Leftile said, seeing no point in speaking if the journey, which she believed would be relatively short, was going to be over too quickly for her to detail it enough for it to be interesting.

"It would be even longer if we talked about each of Fluorite's components." Rightile added.

"I don't mean to pry if you don't want to say, but it is a long way to the base." She informed them, pinching her fingers on the holoscreen to zoom it out all the way to prove her point, the sheer amount she had to downsize the map before the white marker representing the base appeared leaving the off colours in wide eyed surprise at how far they needed to travel. "Might as well try and fill the silence with something." Zircon finished with a shrug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year's eve to all my readers!
> 
> I just want to say a big thank you to everyone for the over 600 views this story has received so far from when I first posted it in the middle of August to now at the end of 2020.
> 
> A/N:
> 
> Just to clarify something, this Blue Zircon is not the same one that appears in the episode 'the trial'.


	12. Descent: Chapter 5

He felt his body steadily rocking up and down with every step she took, and as his consciousness returned when he shook off the weight of slumber he realised, from the position of his body, that he was no longer sitting on a set of shoulders a little ways above the ground. Instead, he lay splayed out and chest down on a soft mat of puffed white hair that towered high above the craggy, gravel strewn ground.

“Hello Bolt, how was your rest?” Fluorite asked as she detected him shifting around, wanting to make idle chatter to fill the silence and to make sure that he was alright.

“It was... nice.” A short and groggy yawn cut his curt reply in two as his eyes fluttered open. He took a while to process that she had at last wholly reformed, and seeing this he adjusted himself to take up his favorite position of sitting cross legged on the huge fusion’s head, his lower body now nestled waist deep snugly in her hair.

He took to letting his perspective wander and had a gander at the surroundings, and for what was likely only the second or third time ever, the bland scenery in the kindergartens caused a sense of awe to overtake him. It was not long until he realised how far they must have travelled from their usual domain with how dramatic the lay of the land had changed.

They were currently on a sloped stone ramp, easily wide enough to fit a hundred people standing side by side with some room for adequate personal space to be maintained in between each member of the imaginary line to spare. Below them was a gap many dozens of meters across that separated the ramp from countless pockmarked, half kilometre tall monoliths that stretched beyond the horizon in neat parallel rows either direction.

Each of them were elongated and spaced out far enough that the wide ‘gaps’ which separated them were more akin to massive canyons. Then, enormous though undecorated stone pillars that were also filled with exit holes rose from their tops at regular intervals every few hundred meters or so up to the roof of this layer of the planet, maintaining structural stability as they took on the weight of a world on their solid foundations.

With no other topic to speak about, he decided to build upon what she started as he wondered. “How long was that cycle?” The satisfying crackle of unused joints being popped filling the air in the immediate seconds after he spoke as he twisted around, for so far it had been thrice he had slept in the past two days they had spent travelling so he could pass the time.

“Three hours.” A small inflection of attentiveness was present in her voice, since while the length of his sleep was not beyond or below the norm, the amount of times he had done so was unusual. “You’ve gone into quite a few rest cycles recently. Fighting those quartzes must’ve left you rather spent.” 

Despite the praise, Bolt only shrugged and let out the humble reply he had in mind. “I only battled two of them, and to be fair to her, Hydrazine did most of the work.”

“Still, a quartz is a quartz.” She said, the underlying suggestion of the statement meant to be a positive one.

“I suppose so.” He replied, accepting the compliment. But with that their discussion had hit a dead end.

So for now his normally sharp senses were left to grow dull, and with no danger to watch out for, he chose to try and fill the time by looking for anything mildly unique or entertaining in the general locale to muse at. With neither of the two finding any common topic to talk about, Bolt idly hummed a repetitive tune as he tapped out the beat on his thighs while Fluorite carried on walking down the ramp, and before he knew it, they were down on ground level.

Squinting his eyes, he made out a number of hazy grey, vaguely gemoid silhouettes seemingly staring back down at him from the walls above. Rapidly blinking, he removed the remaining tiredness that fogged his vision and shifted his eyes to enter the mode where they were more sensitive in the low light, only for the silhouettes to fade away before he could catch any sight of them as they shifted beyond the edge of the clifftop. But if it was any consolation, the illusions at least directed him towards something of interest to stave off the ever present issue of boredom which plagued every child.

There, as they entered one of the corridors between the rows of walls, stuck out a handful of rusted four legged crawlers, their cylindrical bodies and limbs almost gangly with how thin they were. Then on one side instead of dull metal was a glass-like material that exposed the veiny, nearly organic looking machinery in the interior. Last of all, they were tipped with a drill at bottom and a white crystalline icosahedron at the apparent top - the purposes of which he could make no heads or tails of.

“Fluorite.” He said, getting her attention as he stared upwards. “What are those objects up there?” 

Keeping her head still as to not accidentally knock him off, she instead turned her eyes in the appointed direction, and the moment she saw the objects in question she immediately knew what they were. “Those are injectors, they are how gems are made.”

“But… _how_ do they make gems?” She may have given him a response, but as always it was not enough to satisfy his insatiable curiosity and he continued to ask for more.

“I’m no expert, but I do know the basics.” She informed him, smiling lightly as she fed his hunger for knowledge. “It drills into the ground and injects a mixture made of each of the diamond’s essences and minerals into it. The mixture then drains the lifeforce in the ground around it, and over a few hundred years that solidifies to create a gemstone.”

“Drains?” He muttered while his eyebrows raised a minute amount at the possible connotations of the one word, for not many of them led to a pleasant explanation.

Fluorite became ever so slightly downcast as the answer came to her. Her components’, and so her own opinions, on organics had been comparatively mild when placed side to side with the opinions of other gems. Mild in the sense they were indifferent to them - not particularly disgusted by their presence nor holding any care for them - and that had held true for nearly the entirety of the many millennia they had collectively lived.

Nearly.

There was some bittersweet irony to be found in the reality that the first outsider to give two shards about her in this current form was an organic. But she did not outwardly complain, for Bolt had proven himself time and time again to be a dependable friend with an amicable attitude that would never falter. At least so long as anything related to the upper crust or the morally absent practices of the Empire were not mentioned within earshot.

“Fluorite?” He called her name again as he became anxious of the possibility that his endless curiousity had struck another sore spot for her.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you. What was your question again?” She knew he had been through much recently, so she weaved around the chance of him wanting to do more to burden himself in order to help her by pretending to not have heard him - despite his low volume still being clearly audible to her. While she found some solace in his sympathy, she would not impose any further than what she felt was necessary.

“What do you mean that the process of gem creation ‘drains’ lifeforce?” There was a sickened softness to his voice, one that could have been described as causing heartbreak to Fluorite had she been an organic too.

Fluorite prefaced her next words with a quiet sigh, remembering the one that sat on her head right now. “It’s unfortunate that to make more gems, our kind need to... take away what makes organic life possible from their planets.”

“Is… is there another way?” He asked, but the small kernel of forlorn hope he held onto that an alternative existed was snuffed when he felt her move from under him.

All she could do in response was shake her head side to side, disappointed that she was unable to tell him something else. “No.” 

Bolt was taken aback by the potential severity of the situation this hinted at. He wanted to make another snide comment to castigate the diamonds, but he could see this was not entirely their fault. On a greater level, as harrowing as the idea was, this was what they needed to do to keep their species alive. Yet on a smaller scale, without this destructive process, the ones who raised him would never have been created.

“How much longer will it be until we find the others?” He asked to start a different line of questioning, wanting to move onto a more lighthearted topic.

"Oh, in about three…” 

“Two, one.”

#####

“-she didn’t wait. The moment Morganite saw us- me together, she snapped out orders for other rubies in her retinue to arrest me.” Rhodonite recounted. “After that, well, I knew that even if I was lucky enough to get one of your type to represent me in court, it didn’t look all too good for me.”

“So you were taken into prison after your owner found you fused together so she could save face and then you were thrown into _that_ grossly skewed ‘justice’ system.” Zircon summarised, perhaps a bit too bluntly, but the former prisoner agreed with her sentiment anyway.

“You’ve pretty much got it.” A dejected shrug of her shoulders following the short statement.

Kissing her teeth, Zircon momentarily switched off the screen to face Rhodonite. “I hear this all too damn often, and to tell you the truth, it’s one of the reasons why I turned traitor.” She told her, pausing for a second and taking a deep breath to collect her thoughts. “Long ago it might have done its job fairly, but by the time I left it was nothing more than another tool for the aristocrats to play with as they wished in their power struggles.”

“Power struggles?” Rhodonite questioned, finding it hard to believe that such things happened with her components having been so close to a member of the upper class and yet neither of them were witness to any of what the former lawyer described. “I’ve never seen anything like that, and I served Morganite for about three millennia.”

“You’d be surprised at how sly they are about it.” Zircon said, the middle ranking gem having been privy to some of it. “Left and right anyone, especially their rivals, who slipped and committed a minor transgression that could have been easily corrected with some prison time or minor reprogramming were sent to the courts as soon as possible instead, all so they could make a show of it to please their diamonds for catching ‘criminals’. Sure, fusion isn’t exactly a minor crime, but I think you get the point.”

“Really, that’s how it works with the upper crust? No wonder why she was so quick to send me away.” Rhodonite said, flashing a sardonic grin for a second before returning to a slight glumness. “Guess at that point that’s all I was to her, a little bit more prestige to add to her name.”

“Oh it gets worse than that you know.” She added with a rueful tone. “It’s unbelievable how many times they’ve tried to bribe me. Not because they were going to lose a case mind you, but because they wanted me to add flair to my declarations to make their opponents look more guilty!” Sighing hoarsely at the end, she finished before it could devolve into a rant.

As Zircon continued to expose the immoral practices of the aristocracy, the off colours visibly grew more and more aghast or reviled with every detail that chipped away at their perception of their higher castes. Not that it was very positive in the first place, but they at least had the faith that those who were delegated with the job of managing the Empire would have more integrity than in the reality she presented to them.

Except for Padparadscha, who remained at the sidelines absorbing all the information and the ensuing reactions of her friends. As her delayed perception of time caught up with them, her usual jolly demeanour faltered somewhat as she saw and heard them bemoaning the behaviour of her caste, but aside from a slight slumping of her head downwards, she otherwise remained passive.

“What did you do when they approached you?” “Yeah, wouldn’t they try to… pressure you?” The Rutiles asked, a certain amount of dread mixing with interest as they thought about how dangerous it would be to oppose the requests of those whose influence was so far reaching - and egos even more so.

“I see why you’d think like that- and you’re spot on. Before, they’d at least have had the sense not be so bold about it, maybe only a nudge with increased bribes and some minimal threats here and there. But as of a couple thousand years ago… eh, let’s say corruption wasn’t the _only_ thing that pushed me to leave.” Zircon said, leaving it at that as she turned back to the way ahead and turned on her monocle’s holoscreen again.

“Enough about me though, I’ve still yet to hear anything from you two- three, sorry.” She corrected herself.

“It’s alright.” Leftile said first.

“It’s fine.” Rightile followed soon after.

“Do not worry.” Padparadscha piped up a little later.

“...So, what’s your story?” Zircon said to the twins after an awkward silence.

“Hmm? Oh, we were made here on Homeworld after the rebellion as part of a small batch of rutile quartzes and other pink court gems using some of the last of Pink Diamond’s essence.” Rightile began.

“I think it was for a project to try and squeeze out more gems from a few of the already colonized planets to make up for the loss of Earth.” Leftile added.

“But when we emerged we came out with our gemstones fused together, and for some reason the other rutiles backed off instead of arresting us.”

“Why was that?”

“I’m not sure, but we did hear the word ‘cluster’ being thrown about a lot by some of the peridots who were there. They all honestly seemed kind of… afraid anytime anyone said it.”

“Cluster, cluster, cluster.” She muttered as she temporarily switched away from the map and to any references and archives she retained access to after her defection in the vague wish to find anything on the topic. There was little that could evoke enough fear to temper a quartz’s usually fiery disposition, and so whatever it was would likely be of interest to her. But, as was expected, her search came up empty so she gestured for the twins to carry on.

“So that was when we made our escape. While all the other rutiles were running off or being shooed away by the peridots who began calling for citrines as backup-” Rightile’s voice faded into the background for a moment as Zircon let her thoughts to the forefront, both humoured and alerted by her testimony.

On one hand, she now had the hilarious image of a team of nasally scientists telling off a squad of soldiers. However, on the other hand it was concerning to hear that they skipped past the normal yellow quartzes and went all the way to summoning the elite troops of the yellow court. It made her suspect the severity of whatever a cluster was to be far beyond what she originally thought and so, before she turned back to the map, she made a note to delve into the subject at a later date.

“-we ran off into the dark as far and as fast as we could.”

“We jumped down ledges and skulked through tunnels until we thought we were far enough to be safe, but we never were.” Leftile said, her words solemn.

“The first few days were the worst. We kept running into the squads of citrines or robonoid swarms, and once we were nearly caught out by both at the same time.”

“We were almost cornered, but we thankfully managed to slip past the swarm undetected and we hid-” “-in an exit hole because we knew we were nowhere near fast enough to escape normally formed quartzes.”

“It wasn’t long until the citrines passed us and ran into a different part of the kindergarten. After that, it took a while, but we eventually found the courage to walk out again.”

“And right after that was when we met Padparadscha!” Rightile revealed, sounding a little more upbeat now.

“Yeah, we found her wandering all alone in the lower parts of Homeworld’s kindergartens.”

After a few seconds she became aware that she had been mentioned again. Though she initially winced at the way the Rutiles retold the events, she knew they meant no direct offence. So with a silent huff, she raised her head back up and forced back a full smile as she subtly increased her pace to line up with the rest of the group, as it did not take a fortune teller to know it was her turn next.

“Ah, hello your cl- ahem, sorry, hard habit to break.” She apologised. “Padparadscha, I’ve been meaning to ask for your side of the events.”

“It is alright.” Though somewhat delayed, the pardon was given out readily, for she knew it was an honest mistake.

“And how did you manage meet eachother in the first place?” It was Rhodonite’s turn to be curious. And while she too was not purposely being hurtful either, after ten seconds Padparadscha could plainly see that the meaning behind their question was more in the direction of how she survived emergence, especially considering the sheer disadvantage her defect imposed on her, as opposed to how she actually found the Rutiles.

Though there was an attempt to veil the true nature of it behind the wording, it did the barest to make her feel any better, and if anything it only softened the blow. “I foresaw the predicament the twins found themselves in and moved to find them. I had already been in the kindergartens for some while, and I thought I would be able to aid them with my knowledge of the area.” She said, not once breaking the cheerful demeanour she felt was expected from her.

“Really?” Zircon said, a reserved sense of respect mixing in with her tone as she appreciated the ingenuity of using her failed powers in such a way. “How long had you been down there then by the time you two met?”

After a few seconds she felt some pride beaconing from within as she heard her approval, and the slight increase of the mood in her following statement reflected that. “Around seven centuries, if I remember correctly.” However, it came sliding back down in the following silence as she saw within the minds of the other three - the words ‘seven centuries’ apparently being far higher than the amount of time they had initially thought that she had survived alone.

“I see.” Zircon murmured thoughtfully, another question rising up. “Now that I think of it, I had never heard of any other sapphires before, so how did that come about? Though to be fair, it has been a while since I left.” Being a former member of the blue court, she had assumed that such a niche ability would remain their specialty. But it seemed as though - if she was correct in guessing where the colour orange would belong to - either the yellow court or the now defunct pink court had taken an interest in replicating it.

“I know little of the specifics around my creation.” She prefaced with a disclaimer. “But I do believe I was part of an initiative that was the direct predecessor to the one that created the Rutiles. In fact, had Pink Diamond not been shattered, I believe her essence would have continued to be used for this instead.” She bit her lower lip for a moment, realising how passive aggressive that could have been to the twins, but upon seeing they did not take it that way she returned to her smile barely a blink later. 

“Used for what?” 

“There was an earlier drive to experiment in the creation of future vision capable gems for the pink court, but as with all experiments there were some… errors in the initial stages." She absolutely hated it, remembering feeling useless, feeling helpless. Despite this, on the outside she showed none of that and continued to smile and sound gleefully dismissive the rest of the way through. "But I hope they learnt from it, after all, it would be a shame for the others to be thrown away like I was.”

But she had found her purpose and others to help her, and she would help them in return in her own way with her morale shoring up their morale. There was a constant nagging in the back of her mind that told her a slack in her optimism would affect them all, even from something as small as declining to talk about herself. This was all she had, and so she kept it up with the same diligence any loyalist did at their workstation in a desperate attempt to cling onto a sense of purpose.

“Oh, in about three… two, one.” A voice echoed as the sound clashed with the canyon’s walls, and upon hearing it, Padparadscha let out a sigh as her mind eased and her smile was at last backed up by genuine emotion when her perception caught up. 

It appeared as though she had been saved from recounting any more of her cheerless early memories when an enormous multicoloured figure emerged from the dark in front of them. It was followed by the sound of rock being crushed underfoot as another person leapt off from their head, who then slammed feet first on the ground with a resounding crack and then dashed towards them.

“No way…” Rhodonite whispered softly. Though, as reserved as she sounded, a huge grin appeared on her face as it became instantly obvious who the two people approaching them were. She knew they were coming, but she did not expect it to be so soon.

“Is that..?” “Are those..?” The Rutiles responded in kind, both of them delighted by their arrival and beginning to walk out to meet them in return.

“Bolt and Fluorite!” Padparadscha exclaimed after a delay, clasping her hands together as her face brightened and she followed suit with the twins.

At this point Rhodonite too understood what was coming and jogged to catch up with the rest of the group, all five of them meeting in a controlled collision to form a lopsided group hug centred around him, with Bolt having to partially crouch a little lower to include the shorter seer. Though both parties knew that the other was unharmed, feelings still ran high when their isolation was finally broken and they laughed together.

As Fluorite passed by she let out a chuckle while she observed the event from above, hearing the cries of joy and rapid fire conversations that bounced between each member of the hug. And as they finished asking how eachother had fared, it soon broke apart as all their compressed emotions were given a means to at last spread out.

“So this is the organic you were speaking of.” Zircon added on her approach as she got over the initial surprise of the sudden and animated nature of their reunion, sounding far less skeptical now that she had seen physical proof of his existence. While her eyebrow did also raise on spotting the symbol on his chestplate and her puffer jacket, she made no further comment.

“Yep, tough little pebble he is too.” She said, giving his bald head a short noogie before he let out a laughter filled whine and gently pushed her hand away.

“Oh! This is Blue Zircon. She is going to be showing us the way to a place where they shelter off colours.” Padparadscha introduced her to the two with authentic enthusiasm.

“Truly?” He said his mind aloud, grateful to hear that such a thing existed. So with an open hand raised to her in greeting, he added a cordial address. “Pleasure to meet you then. It is good to see there are those who care.”

Fluorite moved in, following the young organic’s polite example and holding out one of her lower hands to reach down far enough to close the distance between them. “I agree, it’s a shame there aren’t more like you.” Though in truth that sentiment came from her, at least in part, also being a defector of the blue court.

Zircon met the friendly gestures with her own hand and she gave the pair a brief, but firm professional handshake. “No need for flattery, I’m simply doing my job.” 

“I was under the impression that Zircons were created to be lawyers.” She quipped.

“Not this one.” She deflected back, a small, though wry smirk plastering itself on her face. “In any case, now that the niceties are over it would be best that we continue on. Should only be another half day’s travel by now.”

“Lead the way then.” She said, her face lightening a little as she imagined the prospect of at last having some safety and stability, the feeling of it made all the better by Ammolite’s relatively limited precognition not spoiling the surprise.

“Fluorite, you never told me that we would find another person!” He murmured excitedly as he faced her, the gentle giant returning the beaming attitude as she looked to him too.

“You have me there.” She admitted. “In that case, I’ll let you into a little secret - there are three more, just waiting to meet you.” There was an air of mild smugness that was not lost when she turned to inspect the canyon walls above, confronting the ones that she knew had been following them since the moment her component had scanned their immediate route for any threats a few days ago.

The figures slowed, as did Zircon when she heard what Fluorite had said and she once again swapped out the map, this time for her set of contacts. She stalled for a while, finger floating above the holographic display as she pondered which course of action to take. As much as she wanted to sweep it under the rug and tell them to head back to base, four or potentially five of the six she was guiding already knew they were there, so she found little point in it.

_‘Besides, the rest of them seem to have taken it in stride.’_ She reasoned to herself. 

Zircon would be lying if she wasn’t at least a small bit nervous of the organic. And though many of those uncertainties were washed away by the fact he had so far proved to be mild mannered and somewhat reserved when unprovoked, the savagery he could inflict when he was still gnawed at her, even while she was only a secondhand viewer of his handiwork. Despite that, her principles prevailed when she concluded to have an honest approach and tapped her fingers all across the screen before sending out the request for them to introduce themselves.

“Three more? Where?” He said as he turned his own head in the same direction, confused as to what she was looking at. He may have been only a few seconds behind Fluorite, but in that short period her detection of them had caused the figures to shirk back beyond the top edge.

“You’ll see soon enough.” Was all she let slip.

The rest of the off colours quickly caught onto what she meant, and as strange as it was that they were now also being watched, they did not seem to openly oppose the idea for they had long been assured of their benefactors' good intentions. Though they did initially question how Fluorite knew, all of them quickly remembered that those same people looking over them had relayed that Ammolite did spend a period independent from the rest of her components.

So they too kept in doting silence, wordlessly agreeing to play along with Fluorite in keeping it a surprise for Bolt. This general air of acceptance that floated around them gave Zircon the confidence that she had made the right decision, for even if the increasingly unlikely outcome of him becoming aggravated came to pass, then the others in his group would be there to reason with him.

_“Are you sure?”_ The blip of a notification drew her attention back to the screen, and as vague as it was, on reading the message it did not take long for her to conclude they too likely held the same reservations about the organic that she did moments ago.

_“Certainly, they’ve all been friendly so far.”_ She sent back.

Having memorised the immediate route ahead, she took a right turn as she got to the end of this facet of the kindergarten, moving past the ten dozen or so meter wide corridor in between where the rows of gem manufacturing space ended and where the ramp leading down to it began. And not soon after, the ghost blue projection in front of her eye buzzed out again.

_“Alright.”_ At this she could only breathe out a short sigh, one neither of relief nor fear, but from a more neutral anticipation of things to come.

“Look out!” A gruff voice harked out to the party below, causing them to twist their heads to face the ledge five hundred metres above.

The enigmatic trio leapt down and kicked up a thin dust cloud around their feet upon their descent, landing on the ground with their legs bent and one hand laid palm down to soften the impact of their rapid fall. Once grey silhouettes became green, pink and silver now that they finally removed themselves from the shadows.

“Took you long enough to get here Zirc.” The green one said. They were rather tall for their type, an era one peridot then if he had to guess, clad with all sorts of strange but compact machinery on her wrists.

“Cut that.” A tall fusion of what appeared to be a Bismuth and a White Quartz demanded of the Peridot despite her words being in obvious jest. “Don’t worry about her, you’ve done a good job.” She told Zircon before looking to face the off colours and Bolt, craning her head up and down as she analysed them.

Despite making sure to appear to bear no ill will, being made from a builder and a soldier meant that Silver Quartz’s gaze had an enhanced intimidating quality to it as her broad build and over ten foot height cast a dim shadow in the low light over all of them except Fluorite. On the other end of her gaze, the off colours found it unnatural to be stared down by a member of the white court without fearing arrest or worse, but they held their calm, as her position as a fusion meant that she was likely of no danger to them.

“So these are the newbies then? Welcome!” A Rose Quartz greeted with the same friendly zeal that was once well-known to come from their kind. 

Every one of the off colours nearly went slackjaw at the sight of the pink gem that approached them, staggered by the existence of an active model of that type of quartz still roaming anywhere in the galaxy, and in Homeworld of all places. Though most of them kept their composure as they soon crossed out the nigh impossible chance that the person in front of them was one in the same as _the_ Rose Quartz.

However, only moments later Fluorite and Rhodonite narrowly managed to avoid scrunching their faces as they dredged up the memories of their components. They had seen the very public purge projected all across the Empire carried out on their type as the famous - or infamous - Rose’s treachery was revealed. Yet here was one, standing freed and unbubbled before them.

Meanwhile, fascinating it was for him to be a witness to the unique defectors, as he pieced the clues together Bolt wailed out in sudden revelation and interrupted the nonchalant meet and greet that was carried out in front of him. “Wait- is no one going to question the fact that we were being watched the entire time?!” He said, both his volume and the passive aura wielded by Primarchs roping in everybody’s attention to him, prompting an uncomfortable silence to rain down on the gems.

“Oh… right, sorry about that.” The Rose Quartz apologised first, rubbing the back of her neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> This is less of an author’s note this time around, but more that I’ve just realised it has taken me 11 chapters to describe Bolt as being bald. 
> 
> So to satisfy a silly little question that popped up in my head I’ve gotta ask, for any readers here who came from the SU side of the crossover but don’t necessarily know of WH40k, did you think he had hair? If so, what hairstyle did you imagine he had?


	13. Interlude: Guardian Devil

**Homeworld**

Time stood still on the planet for a moment as the distorted azure image above at last coalesced from a stretched blur into a great blue arm, the miniature singularity in front of it finally dissipating as it exited from FTL speeds and made its descent onto the surface. 

Spectral flames gently lept from the engine placed at what would be the shoulder joint of the machine, lighting up the already eerie night sky while it slowly covered the final stretch of its journey onto the equally massive landing pads that lay at the centre of where the planet’s separate administrative quadrants met. 

The mental connection between the Diamond within and her own ship momentarily buffered as she imperceptibly shuddered at the sight of her creator’s ship as it stood there, dominating the landscape on a massive podium ahead of the white section of the central hub. It had sat there dormant, with her sitting inside it for the past six millennia, not to be seen by another soul in living memory of everyone born in era two.

Though little knew of it, her practically petrified state did not mean she was totally idle. While the pace of the white court’s activities had indeed slowed without her direct guidance, they did not stop to a complete halt. However, with their penchant for seclusion heightened after the distrust spawned by the rebellion, few outsiders could guess at what their tasks were related to, and fewer still had the will to pry. 

Whether it was to respect the founding court’s wishes for privacy or out of fear was anyone’s guess, though as a consequence, not even the other Diamonds knew what happened behind those closed doors, despite the fact White’s territory still claimed a large fraction of the Empire. She had effectively made herself and her subjects pariah, untouchable, and not out of any stigma from the wider society, but of her own orders.

That was the eminent topic that shoved its way to the forefront of Blue’s conscience as the external sensors of her ship fed the view of the white quadrant into her mind. It lay only a few dozen kilometers below and beside her, give or take, yet it was an entire world apart. The place was utterly inaccessible, even for her, aside from a direct invitation by White herself. It vexed her immensely, to be counted among the most powerful beings in the known universe by countless people, only to be so powerless when faced with the only one above her. 

While her ship arrived over her designated podium and lurched upwards to point to the sky, a single tear fell from the Diamond’s right eye.  _ ‘Was this how Pink felt?’  _

She harkened back to those ancient memories, remembering how incensed Pink would always be when the other two, and her as well at times, treated her with disregard or outright ignorance whenever she gave out her own thoughts or requests, even when she showed the proper etiquette. Blue herself had always tried her best to treat her with respect and as an equal, for she was still a Diamonds after all, but it seemed as if what care she did show was never enough. 

Vexation only grew further as she remembered how the other two stymied or undid her efforts whenever they tried to mould her into a ‘proper Diamond’ through force. Though as always, she buried these opinions beneath a mask of mourning, as it would be unbecoming of her to risk conflict with the rest of the triarchs to fulfil an old vendetta, especially one that by all means should never have arisen.

And as tremendous as her grief was whenever she was reminded of her fallen sister, on this occasion she at least stayed aware enough to understand that she was in the middle of the most densely packed urban centre in the galaxy, and that it would perhaps be best not to let her unstoppable aura of misery spill over into the general populace.

The ship’s engine slowly powered down, and the distance it hovered over the podium decreased accordingly until it touched down. When the ship landed, its palm opened towards the even larger artificial steppe in the middle, made to resemble the symbol of the old authority of four, and a circular flash of blue light erupted from the palm before a gigantic sphere over fifty feet in diameter emerged from it. 

As the glossy object came out in its entirety it floated there for a time, capturing the attention of the millions of people within the streets, boulevards and buildings of the local area as they went into a collective seizure of disbelief, many rapidly blinking to make sure that this was not some apparition. But it was to no avail, the spectacle that unravelled before them was real, and no matter the amount of times they tried to refresh their eyes it continued to exist.

For the first time since the dark days of the rebellion there was another Diamond on Homeworld - and they had come completely unannounced.

#####

**Blue Diamond’s Palace**

There was a single massive palace near where the domains of the four met, and in days long gone it once held a place as the active administrative heart of the Empire. The Diamonds and high ranking courtiers would flow in and out of its vaunted halls as they gathered and discussed matters of state, lavish balls would be held whenever a new planet was colonised and increasingly ambitious projects would be put forward by the most learned in the sciences to advance their species.

But now- now it was a husk, a rather well kept husk, but it remained a husk nonetheless. The same could be said for the other palaces on the home planet as their owners strayed further from the Empire’s core and were no longer given any reason to come back. There was no more reason for mostly symbolic physical meetings or balls and dances to be arranged, as time itself became a precious resource with their borders having expanded and only two being left to actively do a job meant for four.

Besides, it had often been Pink who organised many of those gatherings for the morale of the people.

However, being built early on in that golden age, Blue Diamond’s first palace had illustrious architecture which reflected that lost glory with its athenian style of construction, and this glory continued to shine unabated despite its disuse in the eons since. 

Intricate pillars with statues in her likeness carved into them flanked the halls, all the while walls were sown with magnificent murals equally titanic and detailed that depicted the events of the blue court’s founding, including the planet Blue Diamond herself was born from being broken as she emerged, and beside it were the images of the earliest nobles and their legendary deeds - deeds that would have faded into myth had it not been for the thorough records kept throughout the ages.

An ocean hued polished marble-like material formed the floors, the cerulean shades expertly mixed with white undertones to create the illusion of waves crashing amongst eachother. Conversely, the arched roof was made to display the heavens as the twinkling iridescence above birthed the image of a dynamic aurora and star filled sky as a viewer moved. Then there were the gates that flaunted themselves, acting as sentinels to the different wings of the palace, with jutting triangular roofed arches ahead propped up by more pillars with the Diamond’s image carved into the middle of them.

Once, such architecture may have been purposefully grand as to inspire a sense of reverence for those who tread here, but now with the melancholic mood of era two, the monolithic structures brewed a sense of weakness in the few gems who still walked there. The sense that they were nothing but another grain of dust in the eyes of those on high, that they were replaceable - that if they were to revolt, then sparing them would be no profit, and destroying them would be no loss.

After all, the icy Diamond was not always so cold before the death of the youngest of their number, and nor was the Empire always so starved for resources, no matter how hard they tried to hide it. There was once a time where she upheld a reputation as a shrewd negotiator and a beloved bureaucrat - if such a thing could exist - of unrivalled efficiency in the field of statecraft instead of the feared, silent tempered and steel handed shatterer she now was. 

However, glorious as the past may have been, it was the bleaker modern reality that everyone now had to contend with. As such, discipline was at an all time high as the news of her ship arriving in orbit unannounced had spread like some organic plague. 

Though that was where concrete news ended and rumours began, for the movements of one of the Empire’s grand matriarchs and the reasons behind it was always coveted information. While it was mainly so the upper castes could know how to jostle for their favour, it was also useful to the lower castes as it told them when to be humble and hidden out of sight to avoid their superiors’ inflamed tempers.

Many different reasons were uttered in hushed tones within the spires and halls where the elite lay, at least in the ones further away from the palace where the truth had yet to arrive. Some were innocent stream of consciousness ramblings, with people simply sharing their thoughts and hunches with others. Though it was far more common for there to be a veiled motive weaved around each velvety word - as it always was with the tangled politicking of the aristocracy - as they sought to mislead their rivals with loose ends and lies.

But if there was one single person on the planet who knew exactly why Blue Diamond had come, then it was Holly Blue Agate. 

Among the thousands of others who came to the palace to refill the skeleton crew in order to give their creator an audience worthy of her rank, she was present there too, though for a far different reason. Wherever she walked, she could feel the mounting weight of her failures grow as she was consistently reminded of it with every gaze and gossip that fell on her back from passersby. All of a sudden, she had been dragged into the very thing she believed that she would always be able avoid - the court system.

Holly Blue tried to ignore their mutterings while her face toughened into stoicism and the clack of her boots increased in volume as she subconsciously tried to drown them out with the hardened footfalls she made with every step taken into damnation. Yet, the palace itself continued to taunt her with its beauty and size, as if it told her it would all be fine from one side while at the same time whispering words of her impending mortality on the other. 

She caught herself about to growl in complaint, but she smothered the errant gesture before it could manifest and she only let out a sigh - agates may be a type of quartz, though she was far above the behaviour displayed by her cheaper, mass produced counterparts. If there was at least one partial solace she had in this entire affair, it was that the one who pressed the case against her was her Diamond, and not some greed filled rival.

However, the sheer magnitude of the situation forced any true calm to elude her as frustration took hold. She quietly seethed as she marched through the gate into the next wing of the building and past the crowd on the other side that too started to gossip of her blunder. Though that was part of the reason for her anger, it did not form the entirety of it - she had been fooled and defeated - and by a single juvenile organic and two abominations no less.

She briefly drifted back to a snapshot, wondering exactly how the human had survived the damage handed to him. The Jasper had flung him into the wall at force with little regard for the mission once their temper had been severely stoked. She could remember how the tolling bell of her mortality began to call out to her for the first time as she believed him dead and her objective nullified, but against all the odds, the human crawled out of the rubble alive and with a fury that could only have been so potent if they had the full vigour of life within them.

Even if by some divine miracle she was spared the first time and given a second chance to capture it, there was no point in thinking of what could have been, for the actuality was that she had failed again. As high and prestigious her rank may have been, she knew there was little more she could other than face the consequence. If anything, that only made her failure more grievous in the eyes of her Diamond, for she had been promoted then entrusted with keeping the legacy of Pink alive, and the loss of just one human was one was a grave defiling from the view of Blue.

_ ‘It is no secret that the two were close.’  _ Holly reminded herself, and with that thought, frustration evaporated and despair dripped in. A trial under a Diamond was as fair as any could hope for, as they had no other motive than the upkeep of the Empire, yet it was also the least likely for the convicted to be acquitted from - or survive. 

Not only that, but she was  _ trusted _ to keep the zoo in order, and deep down she felt that her failure had betrayed that trust. So in a sense, she had betrayed her Diamond, and she knew that was an unforgivable act to be met with only the harshest reprimand. 

She almost gave in and allowed her despair to show in tears, but the soldier in her told her to hold on.  _ ‘I suppose there isn’t much left for me then.’ _ In her mind all the sorrow today should be reserved for her creator, not a failure like her.  _ ‘It is her time to grieve, not mine.’  _ She chastised herself for thinking of selfishly allowing a show of emotion.

But the time to dwell on the past was up, as she was given a palpable reminder that it was now time to answer for her incompetence in the present. When she neared the throneroom’s gates a squad of amethysts apprehended her, with two taking hold of her arms and another two marching behind her with live destabilisers in hand. 

_ ‘Insolent grunts.’  _ The words generated themselves in her mind, but did not make it all the way to her mouth to be said aloud as she corrected her own thoughts. The disrespect shown by the soldiers may have chafed at her, but she kept silent and maintained her composure as she knew that struggling would only incriminate her further. 

Besides, much like her, they were simply following their Diamond’s orders.

The final stretch gave an air of consigned peace to Holly, with not a single glance nor gesture exchanged between any of the five. The only sound that filled the air was the clack of boots, the crackle of destabilisers and the graceful flow of other courtiers who were attending the session, and although attention from others turned to her for a third time, most soon looked away as they spotted the amethysts beside her. With their presence, the arriving congregation understood that it would be in their best interests not to inquire any more.

On entering the throneroom the gates behind began to shift, the automated mechanisms within signalled by some unseen observer to start closing now that everybody had arrived. Despite the previous peace, a rising sense of foreboding awakened in Holly from seemingly nowhere as she was placed centre stage, and the gate, which had otherwise been smooth in its movements, slammed shut with noticeable volume.

Though as she continued to look towards the front, she saw those on the tiered seats on either side of her subtly shuffle in discomfort as well. As much as she knew they would fight over her position like untamed humans would for carrion once she was gone, she did not blame them for their anxiousness. It was not everyday that one would be graced with the presence of a Diamond, but to be faced with the prospect of meeting one when their temper was frayed was a dangerous fate, even for bystanders, due to the unparalleled powers they wielded.

The normally alluring luminescence of many buildings in the Empire suddenly felt hostile to her, as if it was a harsh kind of brightness that would wear down the sanity of a criminal being interrogated. Though in this case, Holly did not battle against that idea. In fact, to her it all seemed rather appropriate considering everything.

And with that, the enormous blue diamond symbol before the great throne of the room blinked with a ghostly flash, then the pillar of light that erupted from it shrunk down just as soon as it had appeared. But, the polished sphere it had deposited certainly remained corporeal as it floated there, only moving to float closer to the throne. 

The few seconds it remained intact imparted a weight on the already heavy atmosphere of the meeting. Then, the object at last dissipated, and there, at the focal point, now was the overwhelming presence of the Grand Matriarch herself with her servant standing meekly by her side.

Then, after standing abnormally stiff for a time, with deceptively quiet steps she practically glided over to her crystalline throne at the middle of the far side of the room and sat in it. As she sat there and looked on to her subjects her heavy robes, downed hood and the darkened bags beneath her eyes all united in some maligned pact to create the visage of death itself.

Today as with all days she was to be the sole authority, though unlike death, there was to be bias and fury in her judgement as opposed to the uncaring and sluggish way entropy wore all down to dust.

“To all attending, rise before the presence of the brilliant Blue Diamond.” Blue Pearl whispered as she curtsied to the crowd and then followed on to stand by the foot of the throne with her owner. Quiet and timid as she was, the acoustics of the room did the rest and her voice was projected for all to hear. Then, in hypnotic synchrony, they all soon stood from their seats to do the two armed salute over their chest before sitting back down again.

Though she would not ever say it aloud, she suddenly found a certain amount of jealousy welling up from within her at the pearl. Low as they were in the rankings, they at least found themselves free from the burden of any duty of import that could see them punished if they failed. 

Holly mentally chuffed at the idea as she finished saluting, afraid to show anything physically.  _ ‘Truly, it says plenty of my situation that I’ve found myself envying a pearl of all things.’  _ It was a last spark of dry humour as she unsuccessfully tried to shake off the last weights of dread that were chained to her before she would meet her maker, so to speak.

The diamond symbol at the centre glowed again, this time the pillar of light left behind a pair of blue zircons who continued to scrutinise the information projected on their screens until the very last second they could. Holly recognised the zircon that had her gemstone placed on just below her neck, as if to imitate a large top button on her professional suit. A few days ago they were allowed to meet to do their best to shore up a defense, as little as that might be able to do to help her. But formalities were formalities, and both sides needed a lawyer to represent their interests.

A small pang of sympathy arose from Holly as she looked on at the unfortunate zircon who was assigned to her. A few days ago, some time after she had reformed, was when they first met to discuss how to build her case. Even if it all seemed so pointless, the lawyer still tried to do their job. Normally, like many others of the same standing, she did not accept anything but perfection and success, but these circumstances meant she allowed an exception, if only for the first and likely last time.

In the end the Zircons, both prosecution and defence, were only fulfilling their roles.

_ ‘What more can be asked of from any gem?’  _ And even if she did not appreciate their efforts, who was she to judge, as one who had failed at her own duties.

The trepidation that hounded her rose tenfold as the titan on the throne raised their head, the twin comets that were her eyes now bearing down solely on her as they threatened destruction. “State your name for the record please.” And yet, it was her pearl who spoke instead.

“Holly Blue Agate, Facet-8A3H, Cut-5DC.” She recited with utmost haste and without a single quake in her voice, despite the circumstances. 

When Pearl finished typing out her designation, Blue Diamond gave Holly barely more than a cold nod prior to addressing the prosecution. “You may begin.”

  
After a short bow in respect, the Blue Zircon with her gemstone on over her left chest, which made it appear as if it were a badge, presented her side of the case. “Holly Blue Agate, the overseer of the Human Zoo, had committed the grave crime of gross incompetence in allowing a band of obscene off colours to make away with a piece of her Grand Clarity’s legacy in the form a single juvenile male human.” Though she gradually turned her gaze to make sure she spoke to everyone, she was also careful to pay proper homage to the fallen one while at the same time weaving around the possibility of awakening Blue Diamond’s aura of sorrow.

“I understand what many of you may be thinking, how could a being so fragile as a human possibly escape a station located in deep space intact, even with help from nefarious outsiders?” A purposeful pause broke the statement apart, allowing the question to ferment amongst the crowd. “However, for proof of that, I would like to call on a witness - the one who alerted the accused of the missing specimen in the first place.”

Damning and passionate as the delivery of her words may be, in truth she was just as reluctant doing this as her defendant counterpart. She knew Holly had been nothing but a loyal subject who would work thrice as hard if only she was ever given a second chance, but her own reservations mattered little, for like everybody else, she too had to play her part in the machine.

A small circle of light shone at the side of the throne before the signature solid cylindrical beam of teleportation fired out from it. Radiant as the display was, all that was left in its wake when it evaporated was a single era two Peridot who appeared to be doing her best to maintain herself now that she was in the focus of so many of the high and mighty, not to mention one of the Diamonds themselves.

  
“State your name for the record please.” Blue Pearl intoned, as if speaking from a premade script.

“Peridot, Facet-2F5L, Cut-5XG!” She said as she did the cross armed salute, though perhaps a little louder than was necessary and with the nervousness she attempted to suppress leaking through. 

After holding the salute for another few seconds, she eventually dropped it and changed the fingers of her limb enhancer to form a holoscreen that displayed the first image her robonoids captured of the human, internally wincing as she did. As much as she wished to crop away sight of the more detestable of the off coloured gems from the image, that would have counted as tampering with the evidence. While it was not necessarily punishable to show such sights to the aristocracy, it seemed inappropriate to her to show their more than flawed existence in such a place.

“Approximately four days ago, I was at my station monitoring a number of robonoid swarms when I had received an emergency signal that reported one of them receiving critical damage.” Despite there being a pause in the middle of her statement as well, it was not for dramatic effect, but so she could be given some leave to arrange her fumbled words. “Therefore, I followed protocol to mark out which individuals presented an increased threat level by reviewing the information the robonoid had captured before its destruction.”

Though it had barely begun, the already insurmountable evidence fed fuel to the simmering flame of fear that burned away in her gemstone, but the sargeant barreled through it regardless.  _ ‘Little point in crying over a broken gem that cannot be fixed, better their shards be recycled so it can be of use later.’  _ While she believed that part of her rather militant mantra would never apply to her, she felt it would be better to maintain the integrity she had that many of the other nobles lacked by sticking to it until the end. 

“It was then where I discovered strange readings which could belong only to an organic - high carbon and water content in their physical form, no discernable gemstone, total absence of hardlight-”

Looking around, she tried as much as she could to distract herself from the growing unease that drilled dully into the back of mind, only to cease as soon as she started.  _ ‘No, stop that. Do not distract yourself and face your Diamond with dignity.’ _ But as she returned to focus, she realised the Peridot had already grown quiet despite the amount of evidence they were likely to have gathered. Taut as the rest of the witness’ body was, Holly could see their pupils darting around in anticipation of a concealed threat somewhere.

At first, she thought her nerves were making her see and hear that which was not there, though it was not long before her supposed delusions were supplied with tangible proof that dragged them into the realm of reality. The stances of the Zircons ahead started to weaken, while Blue Diamond and the assembly started to grip the arms of their chairs a little tighter, as though a pallid shroud of tension had started to creep into the room and grew denser by the second.

_ Click- creaaak _

As the throneroom’s gate unexpectedly swung open again, the session that had barely begun was brought to a halt and the so far relatively numb stress within Holly’s mind suddenly spiked to a dizzying crescendo before it slid back down to a slower, though still noticeable and steady beat. She could feel a tingling at the back of her neck, almost tempting her to turn around, but she resisted, for it would be a great disrespect to look away from her Diamond when they demanded her to heed.

_ Stamp, stamp, stamp _

Though as the sound of uninvited footsteps began to echo through the room out of the blue, the rest of the congregation, and indeed Blue Diamond herself, seemed to crane their necks to look at the area right behind Holly. While she had no idea as to what they had spotted, she saw as clear as day that offence and disgust coloured their expressions instantly.

Yet, as time passed by a third emotion rapidly grew to be chief among the other two that tainted the air. Anathemic as it was to every fibre of her being as to point it out, Holly could see that even on the inscrutable countenance of her creator, fear of all things had managed to find a crack and seep its way through.

Each Diamond was a cosmic entity, a great being who was the pinnacle of sentience and one who was looked up to by an entire species - and one which spanned the galaxy at that. Their will was unquestionable by those below them, and none could hope to hold any amount of sway over them save their peers. A Diamond was an absolute, an unchanging constant for others to anchor themselves to in an ever shifting universe. To be all of these things meant that a Diamond did not understand fear, for what was there to be afraid of when they were so unassailable?

However, that  _ thing  _ which had so brazenly appeared from the throneroom’s gates did not bring fear with it, but absolute terror.

If  _ that  _ pearl was the enigmatic head Diamond’s hardened right hand, appearing wherever her puppeteer ordered her to proclaim new and unbreakable decrees that shackled whole worlds to the will of White, then the walking gap in reality in front of her was the hidden left hand, only ever moved to spirit away high ranking courtiers who had lost favour or the loudest dissidents who refused to toe the line.

Unlike their counterpart, her mind was unpossessed and as free as any other gem from the command of her creator, but that - the knowledge that everything she has carried out was willingly done of her own volition - only served to make the unflinching dogmatism she practiced all the more disturbing. Usually such dedication and being beside White Diamond would launch her to public prominence, yet none of the assembled court had even a shard of knowledge as to who she was.

This lack of information, her simple manner of dress and the limb enhancers that clung onto her form influenced the opinions that had started to form among the congregation. Despite this, an ill tranquility remained as none of the amethysts made a move to apprehend her, none cried out in denunciation and the one who had an idea of their position, the Diamond herself, was left with no options but to hear. 

Though missing her spear to conform to etiquette, whether it be from the fact that the symbol of a white diamond was to be spotted on her uniform, or the choking miasma which followed her wherever she walked, everyone was forced to stay their mouth against their will.

Nevertheless, Blue Diamond held a subtle brooding and taciturn stance in order to present a bulwark against her, as the unenviable possibility of drawing White’s scrutiny tied her down and meant that she could not rise from her throne to crush them or order them be taken away. Unlike most of the gems gathered, she was at least acquainted with the one who so boldly approached her. In spite of that, all she had ever learnt in her brief and less than amicable encounters with them was the name of her gem type - a noctilith.

After she saluted, an awkward match of staring reigned as the outsider awaited the Diamond’s address before she would speak, as was courtesy. And, after twenty long seconds of intense intimidation from Blue Diamond, did the silence finally break as she knew they would not leave until the message was delivered. “What matter is it that is so important that you have interrupted this tral? Speak.” Her voice was one level above a whisper, but it contained all the harshness within to force any lesser gem into compliance.

But Noctilith spoke next in solid non-tonality, as though her programming was not erupting in a thousand warnings at all. “Her most Eminent Clarity, White Diamond herself, demands that this trial be suspended until further notice.” 

Though they managed to keep silent out of respect for their own Diamond, the barest mention of the most prominent of the three had the assembly devolve into half paranoid glance sharing as they questioned the validity of the stranger’s claims.

Blue Diamond meanwhile felt a persistent spike of spite jab at the back of her mind at the announcement as her interests fell into conflict with her creator’s.  _ ‘Does White have no shame? This trial is being held in the name of Pink. Perhaps I should have expected this - she never did hold any respect for her in life, why would I foolishly think that would have changed after her death?’  _

Her own aura was on the verge of spilling out and drowning everyone with a flood of tears at this point, and yet it remained contained by some unseen opposing force. While that force soon slowly dissipated, she continued to hold onto her tears out of her own will in order to listen to what White had to say to her, grating as it would likely be. 

_ “With all due respect your Grand Clarity-”  _ She was half tempted to sneer at her, for it was a warm day in deep space that White or her heralds had ever paid anything but dressed up lip service to her, or anyone in general. _ “-it is not wise to slander her, the Almighty Brilliance that guides us.” _

The very notion that someone would speak over her while she grieved- no, that anyone would speak over her at all, only to deliver a statement so obvious and useless snapped her back to the individual in front of her. Though just as she was to retort, she realised that Noctilith’s lips had not parted an inch the entire time, despite the very audible warning she had given her. 

Careful to not look delusioned or weak in front of her own court, she acted as though she had ever heard that and went back to the last confirmed sentence Noctilith spoke. “Why?” Simple and neutral the delivery may have been, the single word was backed by untold ire and outrage hidden just beneath the mask of civility.

The messenger was wise to that, so at the last minute she steered clear away from quoting the words her own Diamond had said to deride the sentimentalities of the other. One option to avoid confrontation was already closed, for Blue Diamond’s mind was now likely put on guard by the action, but that left only one other course to take.

_ ‘Oh Blue, how her flaws continue to cloud the clarity of her thoughts. Even now, when she is not away on Earth wasting time lamenting at Pink’s grave, she carries on with finding ever more unproductive ways to unleash her emotions onto others- such frivolous things they are. If only she could forget about them.’  _ White told her, though it was more of a monologue than anything. She then stood silent for a time before almost nonchalantly adding an ominous final phrase as Noctilith made for the warp pad, her eerily calm voice reverberating throughout the parked ship’s insides with a deeply unsettling quality it did not possess previously.  _ ‘Perhaps she still can.’ _

White Diamond had always viewed every gem in existence as a part of her, and so it was that she expected each one of them to act in line with the same impossible standards as herself. Noctilith was no exception, and being her herald meant that she was under far closer observation than most. So, egregious as it was to speak to a Diamond in such a way, she saw the alternative, to lie, as an unforgivable affront to the very tenets she stood for and was created to uphold.

But… not telling the entire truth was not out of the question either, especially if it meant keeping the fragile peace.

So, after formulating the most diplomatic reply she could, she spoke again. “Your Clarity, My Diamond believes it to be an unproductive use of resources to recycle a specimen that emerged to be as loyal as her.” She said flatly, with nary an inflection in her voice whatsoever. “However, she will not be forgiven as easily as she was spared, for failure begets punishment.”

Paradoxical as her actions were, it was all part of her existence, to tear apart the same illusion of perfection and denial her own creator had crafted in order to face the problems of the Empire for what they are, not what they appeared to be. Useful as it was to have one who could do work no one wanted - and no one admitted existed - any more born with thoughts so free without the same unquestioning loyalty to act as chain and shackle, and it would be dangerously destabilising to the regime.

Blue Diamond’s eyebrows rose indistinctly at the vague but sinister words directed at her guilty courtier as she weighed the choices she had, finding it difficult to feel whether one was heavier than the other. So to let her positively confirm or rebuke, she asked another question that seemed innocuous to many, but would allow her to make a judgement. “Tell me, how is it that you were able to unlock the gates and enter without invitation?” 

“My Diamond anticipated that I may encounter a number of obstacles, as such she saw it fit to give me the tools to bypass them, and among them were override codes for the gates.” She said.

Slightly offended as she was that White would encroach on her territory so blatantly, she kept those opinions caged and continued to press the advance for a more solid guarantee. “In that case, you should be able to provide confirmation of their validity.” Though her tone stayed neutral, her voice audibly increased in volume in an attempt to buckle the herald’s resolve.

But it was to no avail, as Noctilith proceed to let her left limb enhancer’s fingers float away to form a holoscreen without any stark reaction. “Certainly, Your Clarity.” She rang out again in monotone as she sent the identification of her codes’ origins to multiple qualified parties in the room for them to check over, namely the Peridot and the two Zircons.

They spent a number of moments stalled in confusion, unsure of what to do given the suddenness of the decision, but all the same, recognition eventually struck and they began cross-checking. Alongside every second that ticked by as the three worked on their own holoscreens came the burden of rising tension, for everyone present understood this was the make or break point of the meeting. The final proof of whether this was the truth, or the work of a charlatan who had been thorough in their deception.

Eyes remained firmly stuckfast to them, pressuring them further to assess the information correctly and with haste. When the first raised their head to the crowd as they finished, relief did not come, but rising strain instead reared its head and threatened to engulf them as the hundreds in the room awaited their answer.

  
As she stopped herself from swallowing the rising lump in her throat to maintain dignity whilst in front of so many of the upper caste, Peridot responded first. “Your Grand Clarity, I- I believe that it is indeed a match.” It almost felt sinful for her, a lowly scientist, to have come into contact with something that had been directly from White Diamond, but if that was what was demanded of her, then it had to be done.

  
Slowly, the prosecuting Zircon answered next, as she could barely comprehend what she saw. “My Diamond, I… can concur with the Peridot’s conclusion.”

“My findings also confirm that these codes were… issued by her Almighty Brilliance, my Diamond.” The defending Zircon said, the honorific hastily tacked on at the end.

After finally exhausting every avenue she believed to be available to continue the trial, Blue Diamond at last acquiesced to White’s relayed demands - displeased as she was about the outcome. “...Very well then, you are permitted to take her.” Her gaze continued to be level and piercing till the very end, but its effect still blunted and broke on the stony face of the other gem. “This trial will be suspended until further notice.” She said, raising her head, now to speak to the crowd. 

On command, Noctilith immediately withdrew the screen and brought her fingers floating back to her limb enhancer and snapped to a quick salute. Whatever may be the case in Blue’s mind, at least one of White’s hands had genuine respect for her, even if the way they acted contradicted it at times - after all - she too was a Diamond, and so an integral part of what they worked to uphold. But in their line of work she was all too used to being an iron first, for a velvet glove would simply not do, and that inevitably led to conflict.

Upon breaking the salute, she tapped the dumbstruck Holly on the shoulder once before turning around back to the gates. She would have preferred to be able to talk to that Peridot who was the witness and the Jasper too at the same time, but with them being under the purview of Yellow Diamond, she had to wait for the next opportunity to show itself before she could arrange circumstances for her to meet with them. As it stands, she at least managed to leverage one of the people she needed to speak to from a punishment that would likely have ended in death row.

As comprehension of what had just taken place dawned on her, Holly found it in herself to will her legs to life again. One step was followed by another, and soon she was marching side by side with her saviour and new jailer. From their words she realised that she was to be spared death, and while that should have that should have relieved the crushing weight on her sanity, she also knew from the same source that she was not to be spared entirely - justice still had to be dispensed.

And with that, she suddenly found herself wanting to be within the throne room again, to be judged by one of her own instead of a member of the rightfully feared white court.

But it was too late to turn back now, and as they left, it was Noctilith who was the first to speak, breaking the tense silence and bringing terror surging back into Holly’s gemstone. “I wish to know exactly what occurred that day. Spare no detail.”


End file.
